Full text of "The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 9"

See other formats

see a
CAMBRIDGE
ANCIENT HISTORY

OR A
Cy Se 9)

THE LAST AGE OF
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
146-43 B.C.

THE CAMBRIDGE
ANCIENT HISTORY

SECOND EDITION

VOLUME IX
The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146-43 B.c.

edited by

jJ. A. CROOK
Fellow of St Jobn's College and
Emeritus Professor of Ancient History, Cambridge

ANDREW LINTOTT
Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History,
Worcester College, Oxford

The late ELIZABETH RAWSON

Formerly Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History,
Corpus Christi College, Oxford

at] (CAMBRIDGE
SE) UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge ca2 2Ru, UK
40 West 2oth Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarc6n 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

htctp://www.cambridge.org
© Cambridge University Press 1992
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without

the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1992
Seventh printing 2006

Princed in che United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Card no. 75-85719

ISBN O 521 25603 8 (hardback)

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONTENTS

List of maps page xi
List of text-figures xl
Preface xili
PARTI
1 The crisis of the Republic: sources and source-problems I
by ANDREW LINTOTT
1 Ancient theories about the late Republic 6
11 Modern interpretations of the late Republic 10

z The Roman empire and its problems in the late second

century 16
by ANDREW LINTOTT

1 Spain 20

i Gaul 23

ur Sicily 25

Iv Africa 27

v Macedonia and Greece 31

vi Asia 33

vit Military strength and the empire 36

3 Political history, 146-95 B.c. 40
by ANDREW LINTOTT

1 The Roman constitution in the second century B.c. 40

ut The agrarian problem and the economy 53

ut Politics after the fall of Carthage 59

Iv Tiberius Gracchus 62

v Caius Gracchus 77

vi The aristocracy and Marius 86

vit Marius and the equites 90

vitt_ Generals and tribunes 92

4 Rome and Italy: the Social War 104

by E. GABBA, Istituto di Storia Antica, Universita degli Studi, Pavia

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONTENTS

Mithridates
by JOHN G. F. HIND, Lecturer in Ancient History, School of History,
University of Leeds
1 The dynasty
11 The kingdom
m1 Mithridates’ Black Sea empire
1v Kings and Romans in western Anatolia, 108-89 B.c.
v Threats and bluffs
vi Mithridates’ conquest of Asia, 89~88 B.C.
vir Overreach
vu Athens, Delos and Achaea
Ix The sieges of Athens and Piraeus
x The battles in Boeotia
x1 Reaction in Asia, 86 B.c.
xr The Treaty of Dardanus, the fate of Asia and the felicity of
Sulla

Sulla
by ROBIN SEAGER, Reader in Classics and Ancient History, University
of Liverpool
1 Sulla, Sulpicius and Marius, 88 B.c.
11 Cinnanum tempus, 87-84 B.C.
ut The civil war, 83-81 B.c.
tv Sulla’s dictatorship and its aftermath, 82-78 B.c.

The rise of Pompey

by ROBIN SEAGER
1 The revolt of Lepidus, 78-77 B.c.
11 Politics at Rome, 77-71 B.C.

m1 The wars against Sertorius and Spartacus, 79-71 B.C.
tv_ The first consulship of Pompey and Crassus, 70 B.C.

Lucullus, Pompey and the East
by A. N. SHERWIN-WHITE, Formerly Reader in Ancient History,
University of Oxford
1 Preliminary operations: Murena and Servilius
11 The opening of the Third War
m1 The campaign in Pontus
tv Lucullus in Armenia
v Lucullus and the cities
vi Pompey in the East
vit_ The end of Mithridates
vit The Caucasian campaigns
Ix The organization of gains and the annexation of Syria
x Pompey in Judaea and Nabatene
x1 Parthia and Rome
xt The eastern settlement of Pompey
xu Gabinius and the aftermath of Pompey

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

129

130
133
137
140
143
144
149
150
153
154
159

161
165

165
173
187
197

208

208
210
215
223

229

229
233
237
239
244
248
254
255
258
260
262
265
271

CONTENTS

The Jews under Hasmonean rule
by TESSA RAJAK, Reader in Classics, University of Reading
1 The period
mu The sources
i The emergence of Judaea as a Hellenistic state
Iv Territorial expansion
v Conquest and Judaization
vt Hellenization and the image of the Hasmonean ruler
vit Divisions in Jewish thought and society

Egypt, 146-31 B.C.
by DOROTHY J. THOMPSON, Fellow and Lecturer in Ancient History,
Girton College, Cambridge

1 The later Ptolemies

11 Egypt: society and economy

The Senate and the populares, 69-Go B.c.
by T. P. WISEMAN, Professor of Classics, University of Exeter
1 Lustrum
ur The tribunes
u1 Pompey’s absence
1v_ The peasants’ revolt and the bankrupts’ plot
v Return of the hero

Caesar, Pompey and Rome, 59-50 B.c.
by T. P. WISEMAN
1 Caesar and Clodius
ir The conquest of Gaul
mt Egypt and Parthia
Iv Fin de siécle
v_ The reconquest of Gaul
vi The final crisis

Caesar: civil war and dictatorship
by the late ELIZABETH RAWSON

1 The civil war

1 The dictatorship

The aftermath of the Ides

by the late ELIZABETH RAWSON

PART II

The constitution and public criminal law
by DUNCAN CLOUD, Associate Senior Lecturer in the School of
Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester

1 The Roman constitution

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

vil
274

274
277
280

287
291
296
299

310

310
322

327

327
329
338
346
358

368

368
381

391
493
408
417

424

424
438

468

491

vill

CONTENTS

ut lus publicum
It Quaestiones perpetuae

The development of Roman private law
by J. A. CROOK

The administration of the empire
by JOHN RICHARDSON, Professor of Classics, University of |
Edinburgh
1 Provinces and provinciae: the origins of the system
11 The basis and limits of the governor’s power
ur The governor at work
Iv Taxation
v Jurisdiction
vi The provinciae and the provincials
vil Provinciae, provinces and empire: the beginnings of a change
in perceptions

Economy and society, 133-43 B.C.
by C. NICOLET, Professor at the Sorbonne (Paris 1)
1 Context: geography and demography
1 Italian agriculture
m1 Industry and manufacture
1v Commerce and money
v Economy and society

The city of Rome and the péebs urbana in the late Republic
by NICHOLAS PURCELL, Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History, St
John’s College, Oxford

The intellectual developments of the Ciceronian age
by MIRIAM GRIFFIN, Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History,
Somerville College, Oxford

1 Education

11 Social setting

11 Hellenization
tv Scholarship and science

v Pythagoreanism

v1 The new poetry
vu History and related studies
vi Cicero’s theoretical works

1x Cicero and Roman philosophy

Religion
by MARY BEARD, Lecturer in Ancient History, and Fellow of
Newnham College, Cambridge

1 The constants

11 Sources of evidence and the problems of comparison

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

498
§O5

531

564

564
§72
580
585
589
$91

593
599

Goo
6o9
623
627
640

644

689

690
692
696
Jol
707
710
Jit
715
721

729

729
734

CONTENTS ix

mt Political and religious disruption 739
1v Neglect and adaptation 742
v Competition, opposition and the religion of the populares 745

vi Political dominance and deification: the divine status of
Caesar and its antecedents 749
vi The differentiation of religion 755
vir Roman religion and the outside world 763
Epilogue 769

by J. A. CROOK, ANDREW LINTOTT and ELIZABETH RAWSON

Stemmata 777
Chronological table 780
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbreviations page 799
A General studies 807
B_ Sources 811

a, Literary sources 811
b. Epigraphy and numismatics 816
c. Archaeology 821
C Political history 824
a. 146-70 B.C. 824
b. 70-43 B.C. 829
D_ The East 835
a. Mithridatica 835
b. The Jews 838
c. Egypt 842
d. Other eastern matters 845
E_ The West 847
F The law 849
a. Public law and criminal law 849
b. Private law 855
G Economy and society 861
H_ Religion and ideas 871
Index 878

NOTE ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliography is arranged in sections dealing with specific topics, which
sometimes correspond to individual chapters but more often combine the
contents of several chapters. References in the footnotes are to these sections

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

x CONTENTS

(which are distinguished by capital letters) and within these sections each book
or article has assigned to it a number which is quoted in the footnotes. In these,
so as to provide a quick indication of the nature of the work referred to, the
author’s name and the date of publication are also included in each reference.
Thus ‘Syme 1952 (A 118) 100’ signifies ‘R. Syme, The Roman Revolution, 2nd edn,
Oxford, 1952, p. 100’, to be found in Section a of the bibliography as item 118.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

on AM hw NN

eit io” pa
Aw KH =H O

MAPS

The Roman world about 118 B.c.

Italy and Sicily
Central Italy
The Pontic area
Asia Minor
Central Greece
Latium

Spain

The East
Judaea

Egypt

Gaul

Italy

The Roman world in 50 B.c.

TEXT-FIGURES

Rome in the last two centuries of the Republic
The centre of Rome in the late Republic

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

page 18
42
117
134
138
152
188
216
230
276
312
382
426
566

71
37°

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PREFACE

Historical divisions are arbitrary, and beginnings and endings necessary
but misleading. The present volume has for its main theme the process
commonly known as the ‘Fall of the Roman Republic’, and there are
good reasons for beginning the narrative of that process with the
tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 3.c. But the traumas of the
Republic that then began had an intelligible background, and we have
explored it, as was foreshadowed in the preface to Vol. vur’, by
beginning our analysis at 146 8.c., the year of the destruction of Carthage
and Corinth, which the Romans regarded as the apogee of their fortunes.
Indeed, especially in the chapter on Roman private law, which, beyond
the Twelve Tables, has not been dealt with in any earlier volume, we
have harked back unashamedly as far as seemed needful. As for an end-
point, the death of Cicero on 7 December 43 B.c. was chosen in
preference to the Ides of March 44, partly because symbols are as
important as events, and Cicero’s death symbolizes, now as it did then,
the demise of the Republic, and partly because the greatest of all the
pieces of luck that launched the young C. Iulius Caesar (‘Octavian’) on
his course to domination was the death of both the consuls of 43 B.c. in
the action against Antony: Octavian’s usurping entry into the consulship
on 19 August 43 is the second most symbolic date in the funeral annals of
the Republic.

In accordance with a trend that it is now well-nigh banal to cite,
somewhat less space and weight are devoted in this volume than in Vol.
1x of the original CAH to close narrative of political and military events,
and somewhat more to ‘synchronic’ analyses of society, institutions and
ideas; but we have not banished ‘l’histoire événementielle’, for it would
have been absurd to do so. In the first place, narrative is an entirely valid
historical genre in its own right, giving its own particular satisfaction to
the reader, and, in the second, a work of this character will be expected to
furnish a reliable account of public events. Finally, though the time has
unquestionably come to make generally available some of the fruits of
the past fifty years of scholarly cultivation of the terrain of socio-
economic and intellectual history, we have seen it as our task here to

xiii

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

XIV PREFACE

assist in building some bridges between that terrain and the political
history of Rome. For a very important question, to say the least, about
the last century of the Republic is how its social, economic, legal,
intellectual, religious and even architectural changes or resistances to
change were related to the story of political change or failure to change,
and so of civil strife, dictatorship and collapse — whether helping to
determine that process or responding and corresponding to it. If it is
thought that by dividing our volume, accordingly, into two parts we
have deepened the chasm rather than created any bridge, we plead that
we have given readers the best construction-kit we could, on both sides,
for building their own.

A brief survey of the narratives in Part I may help the reader to
appreciate its intended structure. Andrew Lintott sets the scene in
chapter 1, which has two themes. The first is a critical sketch of the
evidence for the period — not an exhaustive ‘conspectus of sources’,
which would have taken too much space and of whose likely helpfulness
we were sceptical. The second is about theories: theorizing about the
‘Crisis of the Roman Republic’ began contemporaneously with the
events, and has been done ever since, sometimes by the most eminent of
political philosophers and historians; and because history is an argumen-
tative and philosophical subject the search for underlying principles,
structures and explanations is renewed in each generation, and readers
may expect to learn something about the answers given in previous
generations before they read on and begin to make up their own minds.
Lintott continues in chapter 2 with a survey of Rome’s overseas empire
and its problems in the years from 146 onward: settlement and acqui-
sition of land abroad by Roman citizens; Spain and Gaul and the rapid
penetration of the West by Roman ways of dealing with things; Sicily
and social unrest; the province of Africa and its relationship to the
kingdom of Numidia, leading to the story of the Jugurthine War; the
new province of Macedonia and the partial integration of mainland
Greece with it; the beginnings of the province of Asia out of the
bequeathed kingdom of Pergamum, its attempt under Aristonicus to
reject the Roman yoke and its influx of Romans and Italians ‘on the
make’; and, finally, the nature and strength of the Roman army and the
demands made on it.

Chapter 3, again by Lintott, begins the main narrative with the
internal political history of Rome in the fifty years 146 to 95 B.C.,
prefaced by analysis of that elusive entity the ‘Roman Constitution’
(really the traditions on which politics normally worked) and of the
nature of Roman political life — how far it was a game played only by
teams of leading families, and so on. (It is here that the reader will learn
why ‘faction’ is to play less of a role in what follows than historians have

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PREFACE XV

given it in the recent past.) Then comes the agrarian crisis of Italy and all
that led up to the Gracchi, including the tribunician legislation of the
years following 146; and that is followed by the central narrative of the
Gracchi, Marius, and Saturninus and Glaucia. In chapter 4, E. Gabba
narrates the origins of the demand of Rome’s Italian socii for admission to
Roman citizenship and the ‘Social War’ of 91-89 B.c. by which, in the
end, they achieved their demand, after which Rome was no longer a ‘city
state’ and its citizen population was more widespread and differently
constituted — events whose consequences were, arguably, the real
‘Roman Revolution’. (In fact, the integration of Italy, a theme of the first
importance embracing the early Principate as well as the late Republic,
will receive appropriate treatment in the new edition of Volume x.)

Chapter 5 is an account by John G. F. Hind of the principal subplot to
the drama of the late Republic, one such as no human dramatist could
have contrived more satisfactorily to entwine with the central political
tale: the story of the last larger-than-life-sized Hellenistic monarch,
Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus, and his conflicts with Rome; this
chapter takes the story down to the end of the first episode in the conflict,
the Peace of Dardanus in 85 B.c.

Chapters 6 and 7 revert to internal political narrative, told by Robin
Seager: in chapter 6 the rise and dictatorship of Sulla, who attempted to
shore up the traditional political order but by his own precedent
hastened its downfall, and in chapter 7 the rise of Pompey down to his
first consulship with Crassus in 70 B.C.

In the first part of chapter 8, A. N. Sherwin-White tells the later part of
the saga of Mithridates and Rome, relating the campaigns of Lucullus
and his efforts to relieve the economic distress of the province of Asia,
followed by the triumphant eastern progress of Pompey, which hugely
extended Roman power in the East and involved Rome for the first time
with Parthia and Judaea. That is the cue for Tessa Rajak to give, in the
second part of the chapter, an account of the Maccabees and the
Hellenization of Judaea under their rule. The third part is devoted to a
final eastern subplot, told by Dorothy J. Thompson: the politics, society
and culture of Egypt in the time of the later Prolemies, now in the
shadow of Rome, their story culminating in that other grandly doomed
Hellenistic monarch, Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator.

The two decades of Roman internal political débacle are consigned to
T.P. Wiseman: chapter 9 the sixties B.c. and chapter ro the fifties, that
period of great complexity because there is, for once, abundant evidence,
with all the politics that led to the civil war between Pompey and Julius
Caesar. Caesar, from the Rubicon to the Ides of March, is taken over in
chapter 11 by Elizabeth Rawson, and she continues the story in chapter
12 to the death of Cicero.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

XVI PREFACE

Part II comprises seven chapters and an epilogue. The chapters work
outwards, as it were, from the political story: law and administration,
economy and the rise of the great conurbation of the city of Rome, and
then ideas and their background, and finally religion. In accordance with
the overall policy of the new CAH, no express account is here attempted
of the belles-/ettres of the last century of the Republic, important though
the Roman achievement in literature undoubtedly is to a rounded
understanding of the period: Volume 11 of the Cambridge History of
Classical Literature now claims that domain. Nor will any attempt be
found here to assess the intellectual and spiritual life of the non-Roman
peoples of the age: the editors have sadly to report that A. Momigliano
was to have contributed a final chapter that would have added substance
to that aspect of the period as well as distinction to the volume. His death
having deprived us of the chapter at a fairly late stage, we decided that
nothing by any other hand could, or ought to, replace it.

Duncan Cloud, then, in chapter 13, handles two themes of Roman
public law. The first concerns developments in the ‘Roman Constitu-
tion’ in the last age of the Republic, a subject about which there is, in fact,
rather less to say than the reader might expect. The second theme,
however, is the rapid development, from minimal beginnings, of a major
system of criminal law courts, one of the striking achievements of the
age, and only too appropriate to a period of such vertiginous change in
political and social behaviour. In chapter 14, J. A. Crook attempts, first,
to sketch the rules of law that to some degree framed and structured
Roman society in the late Republic, and then to characterize the
developments the law underwent and the part played by such factors as
Greek philosophy in influencing those developments. Cloud and Crook
have sought to evaluate and criticize Roman law as well as describe it,
because its strengths and weaknesses, successes and limitations are
closely relevant to many aspects of economy, society, ideas and even
politics.

John Richardson begins chapter 15 by showing how administration
ofa territorial empire was not within the thought-world of the Romans
in the earlier Republic: they thought, rather, in terms of tasks distributed
amongst officials — mostly, in fact, military commands. Administration
was something the Romans learnt the hard way, and the late Republic
was their schooling period. The chapter continues with analysis of the
powers and duties of Roman administrators and of the mechanisms set
up by the Romans to meet overseas responsibilities that they only came
to recognize post hoc: one of the links between law and politics is that the
machinery set up to curb excessive power and corruption of officials
could all too easily be used as the forum for the pursuit of political
enmities.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PREFACE XVii

Natural transition joins C. Nicolet (chapter 16), whose theme is the
expanding economy of Rome and Italy and its impact on the economies
of Rome’s subject states, to Nicholas Purcell, who in chapter 17 puts into
the dossier the city of Rome itself, already huge in population and
constituting of itself a major economic influence; and in that case, too,
we come back to politics, for the Roman plebs, less and less entitled to
claim itself to be the essential community of Roman citizens but more
and more coherent as a new force in politics, is a crucial part of the story
of the Republic’s last years.

Miriam Griffin, in chapter 18, progresses from the social setting of
Roman intellectual life, education, patronage, libraries and so forth, to
some of its characteristic products, particularly philosophy, and then
back to the social dimension, with a discussion of how much such
activities meant to the Roman elite who took them up with such relish.
Finally, Mary Beard, in chapter 19, intertwines the spheres of religion
and politics as the Romans themselves did, replacing the stereotype of
‘decline of religion in the late Republic’ by a new perception of how
religious and political changes belong together in a single story of
change and response to change.

The brief epilogue is the joint work of all three editors.

As concerns references to evidence the contributors have followed the
policy requested of them by the editors, following, in their turn, the
general policy laid down for the new CAH: that is to say, they have not
given footnotes for uncontroversial matter derived from standard
sources but have indicated anything that is heterodox or in need of
particular justification in their accounts. The editors have, however, seen
no need to be doctrinaire, and subjects have been allowed, within reason,
to determine their own treatment.

Responsibility for this preface belongs to only two of the three
editors, J. A. Crook and Andrew Lintott; for their beloved colleague
Elizabeth Rawson died on 10 December 1988. Fortunately for readers,
that lamentable event occurred relatively late in the preparation of the
volume: our colleague had shared all the planning with us, had written
and revised her own contributions, edited her share of those of others,
and worked on the bibliography. Insight, care, enthusiasm, scholarship
and wisdom: such were the qualities of the late Martin Frederiksen
referred to by his fellow-editors in the preface to Volume vir; those, and
in no lesser measure, were the qualities also of Elizabeth Rawson, and of
the editorial contribution to the present volume it would be wrong to
attribute no more than a third part to her.

Not as an editor, but as a collaborator after the death of Elizabeth
Rawson, we have had the exceptional good fortune to secure the help of
Ursula Hall. She is not to be saddled with any responsibility for defects of

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

XViil PREFACE

structure or content, for all such matters were settled long before she
joined us; but in all the technical stages of turning the material into a
book she has borne a major part, and by her close reading and wise and
learned advice has deserved well indeed of the editors and of those who
may read the volume.

Chapter 4 was translated by M. H. Crawford, to whom we express our
grateful thanks, chapter 16 by J. A. Crook. The maps were drawn by Reg
Piggott, the index compiled by Barbara Hird. Glennis Foote was our
acute and vigilant sub-editor; and all the staff of the Press co-operated in
the making of this book with their customary patience and dedication.

J. A.C.
ALL.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 1

THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC: SOURCES AND
SOURCE-PROBLEMS

ANDREW LINTOTT

By the end of the second century before Christ the Romans faced a crisis
as a result of their mastery of the Mediterranean, which was made
sharper by an increased political awareness resulting from their wider
experience and the intellectual contacts made during the acquisition of
empire. What Florus! regarded as the robust maturity of Rome, which
was doomed to collapse into the senility of the Principate, is made a more
complex and more rewarding study by Roman self-consciousness. The
most penetrating assessment of the Roman rise to power before 150 B.C.
was made by Polybius —a Greek familiar with Rome but still an outsider.
The Roman histories which had begun to be written from ¢. 200 B.c.
onwards are lost to us but for a few citations and quotations, but, even if
they were to be recovered, it is doubtful if we would find anything to
compare with Polybius’ analysis. Before the second century had ended,
however, not only had the sheer bulk of Roman historical writing
increased but the material had become diversified. Sempronius Asellio,
who lived in the period of the Gracchi, drew a distinction between
writing mere annals, the traditional Roman narrative of events in a strict
chronological framework, and histories, which interpreted by seeking
causation and motive. In practice this meant that Romans no longer
always wrote omnibus narratives stretching from Aeneas, or the wolf
and twins, to their own day, but produced monographs on specific topics
from the past or present, biographies and autobiographies. Moreover,
the development of Roman intellectual life led to other forms of writing
in prose — treatises, especially on oratory and law, and letters. Mean-
while, Greek interest in Rome did not cease, and one of the most
influential sources for later writers whose native language was Greek
was the Stoic philosopher Posidonius, who in addition to works on
geography and ethnography wrote a full-scale Roman history which
picked up the story where Polybius left it.?

The works of the Roman annalists culminated under the emperor
Augustus with the work of Livy, 120 of whose 142 books dealt with

' Florus t, intro. 7-8. On the implicit theory see Griffin 1976 (A 42) 194ff.
2 See HRR; Badian 1966 (H 4); Malitz 1983 (B 69).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

2 I. THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC

history down to the death of Cicero. However, the only products
actually of the Republican period to survive are two monographs and
some substantial fragments of a history by Sallust, one short biography
by Cornelius Nepos and the military commentaries of Caesar. Nor have
we complete books of Livy on the period after 167 B.c. The accounts of
the late Republic in Livy and his predecessofs, and equally the important
contribution of Posidonius, can only be partially pieced together from
fragments, epitomes and later derivatives. The most valuable later
sources are Greek historians of the Principate. Appian, honoured with
the status of procurator of the emperor in the second century A.D., wrote
an account of the expansion of Roman power subdivided according to
theatres of war and included a history of the civil wars and their political
background. Halfa century later Cassius Dio, a senator and twice consul
under the Severi, compiled a gigantic annalistic history of Rome from its
origins to his own time, interspersed with Thucydidean generalizations
and interpretations. (We have more or less intact the section dealing with
69 B.c. onwards.) To these we must add the biographer Plutarch, who in
about A.D. 100 illustrated political and moral virtue by comparing
eminent Greeks with Romans of the Republic in his Parallel Lives. On
such works is much of the narrative thread of late Republican history
based.

However, by far the most important sources we possess are the works
of Cicero who, although he never wrote the history of Rome his friends
expected of him, has provided through his correspondence a direct
insight into politics and upper-class Roman society between 67 and 43
B.C., and in his published speeches and theoretical treatises tells much of
his own lifetime and the age that preceded it. This means that for the
period in which he was active as a lawyer and politician, 81-43 B.c., we
are in direct contact with Roman public life, while for the fifty odd years
before this his works tell us of events which he either lived through or
learnt of from those with first-hand experience.

There are of course problems in using Ciceronian material. In his
letters to Atticus Cicero tells the truth, as he sees it, and that view may
change from week to week. His own letters to other acquaintances and
those of his correspondents may on occasion be dishonest, disingenuous
or deliberately obscure. In speeches he sometimes risks the lie direct
about a point of fact, more often he suppresses or wilfully misinterprets
events to suit his case. Extreme examples are his assertions that Clodius
plotted to kill Milo in 52 and that Catiline had actually concocted a
preliminary conspiracy in 66, over two years before the one which he
himself suppressed. His veracity at many points can, however, be
checked against his other works or against the secondary sources, and
modern scholars relish the occasions when his falsehoods can be

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC 3

detected. But caution is in order: we should not suppose that the material
in Plutarch, Appian and Dio is sober, mainstream and value-free,
providing automatically a corrective to the tendentiousness in Cicero.
The writers under the Principate were as much at the mercy of their
primary sources as we are, and these included both encomiastic biogra-
phies of men like Pompey, Caesar, Cato and Cicero himself, and by
contrast published harangues or written invectives. Even the history of
Asinius Pollio, a younger contemporary of Cicero and Caesar, whose
account of the civil wars lies behind much of Appian and Plutarch and
probably influences Dio as well, is likely to have been contaminated by
his own support for Caesar and highly critical attitude to Cicero.

There are further important shortcomings in our source-material on
the late Republic. First, the evidence in inscriptions is small compared
with that available for the Principate and with the contemporary literary
evidence. In particular we have few public documents relating to the
period between the dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar. Moreover,
although we know much from archaeology about the city of Rome itself,
our knowledge of urban developments in Italy and the provinces is
patchy. As for rural archaeology, much is being done currently to
illuminate land-tenure and the nature of agricultural establishments in
Italy, but much more remains to be done. In one field the historian is well
supplied. The Roman coinage of the Republic is immensely rich and it
has been exhaustively analysed, not only in order to establish chronology
and to interpret legends and iconography, but also to draw more general
conclusions about the size and likely causes of issues. There have also
been important studies of the coinages of Rome’s allies.4

The sheer bulk of the historical tradition, even if elements in it
conflict, allows us to form a clear picture of what was happening from
about 70 B.c. onwards. Interpretation remains difficult. Contemporaries
were arguably too close to events to see their significance; writers under
Augustus, on the other hand, were too concerned with explaining and
justifying the new dispensation as a reincarnation of the old and thus
preferred to seek individual scapegoats rather than probe the defects of
Roman society and government as a whole. I shall return to this
problem. On the other hand, study of the period from the destruction of
Carthage to 70 B.c. suffers from the comparative paucity of Ciceronian
evidence and the fact that we cannot extract a good continuous narrative
from what remains of the writers under the Principate who digested
Republican sources. The decade from 80 to 70 B.c. is so thinly covered

3 Gabba 1956 (B 38); 1957 (B 39).

“ Crawford 1974 (B 144); 1985 (B 145); cf.¢.g. M. Thompson, The New-style Silver Coinage of Athens
(New York, 1961); A. Giovannini, Rome et la circulation monétaire en Gréce au Ie siécle avant Jésus Christ
(Basle, 1978).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

4 I. THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC

that even a one-line fragment of Sallust’s Histories is precious. The
preceding decade which embraces the Social, Mithridatic and first civil
wars, ending in Sulla’s dictatorship (a period originally described by
contemporaries like Sisenna, Lucullus, Lucceius and Sulla himself) is
better documented from the military point of view, but the politics are
tantalizingly unclear. As for the period that began the crisis of the late
Republic, some great issues — the land-problem, the relations between
Rome and Italy and between the Senate and the equestrian order — stand
out; so do the figures of the Gracchi and that of the new man who was
Rome’s military saviour, C. Marius. But we know less of politics year to
year than we do where the books of Livy survive and where we have rich
Ciceronian evidence. In consequence vital background knowledge is
lacking and the historian is liable to become too dependent on the
presentation of events in the surviving source-material. He frequently
finds himself served with a neatly packaged briefing, which raises more
questions than it answers.

As always, Roman writing about the politics of this time is highly
tendentious, but the problem is not simply one of bias. Two of the
reformers who resorted to violence, L. Appuleius Saturninus and C.
Servilius Glaucia, are damned by a uniformly hostile tradition, as are the
political activities of Marius. On the other hand, both favourable and
unfavourable accounts of the Gracchi survive. More important is the
fact that the power struggle between the demagogic politicians and the
bulk of the Senate is made to overshadow everything else by the sources.
The merits and demerits of particular reforms are obscured in the
attempt to make a moral assessment of those who subverted or defended
the status quo. It is not easy to detect the thinking of men contemporary
with the events in our secondary sources — an exception are the speeches
attributed to Tiberius Gracchus by Plutarch and Appian which seem
ultimately to derive from C. Gracchus’ biography of his brother.
Fragments of oratory (for example those of C. Gracchus and Scipio
Aemilianus) preserved by the antiquarians and grammarians of the
Principate are valuable.5 Further interesting contemporary or near-
contemporary comments on the late Republic may be detected in
histories dealing with a different period. The senate’s disavowal of the
treaty made with the Spaniards in 137 (to which there is also contempor-
ary reference in the coinage) has affected the tradition about the treaty or
Sponsio supposed to have been made by the consuls of 321. Ti. Gracchus’
attitude in his conflict with his fellow-tribune Octavius received oblique
comment in the annalistic accounts of the actions of his father when
tribune in 187. Even the arguments about late Republican agrarian
policy were transposed into early Republican history by Dionysius of

5 ORF.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC 5

Halicarnassus, so that we find denunciation of small allotments and
advocacy of large farms rented out by the state in a speech ascribed to the
consul of 495 B.c.6

A vital check on our literary evidence is provided by epigraphic
documents and archaeology. A disturbing fact about the inscriptions is
that the official acts that they record are ignored or obscured by our
literary sources, so that we are quite unprepared for the material that they
contain. On one side of the so-called ‘Tabula Bembina’ (bronze frag-
ments which once belonged to Cardinal Bembo, now known to have
been first owned by the dukes of Urbino) there is a /ex de repetundis, that is
a law about the recovery of property improperly seized by Romans in
authority, which must be a part of the legislation of C. Gracchus. Our
literary sources do indeed tell us that he changed the juries in this court,
but they give us noidea of the massive reform of procedure shown on the
fragments and the change in the ethos of the court that this implies.
Another example is the law of 101-100 B.c. about the praetorian
provinces and the administration of Rome’s affairs in the East, once only
known from a partial text at Delphi but now further illuminated by an
inscription at Cnidus containing new material. This is totally ignored by
our sources on Saturninus and Glaucia, and yet it must be a measure with
which they were involved and one which gives their politics a new
dimension.’ The reverse of the bronze fragments engraved with the /ex
de repetundis has an agrarian law of 111 B.c. This law was mentioned by
Appian in a brief sentence, but the text itself and its implications about
earlier legislation show the inadequacies of the apparently careful
account of this legislation in Appian. Two parts of this law dealt with
land in North Africa and at Corinth. No other source tells us that the
Romans were planning land-division at Corinth at this point. As for
Africa, the extent of Roman settlement there (including the colony
which literary sources tell us that C. Gracchus tried to found) cannot be
appreciated without the study of this inscription together with the
archaeological evidence for Roman land-division largely deriving from
French air-photography.8

Archaeology cannot solve the problems caused by the inadequacy of
literary sources, but it can at least remind us where they are inadequate.
The revolt in 125 B.c. of the Latin colony on the Samnite border,
Fregellae (near modern Ceprano), is dealt with by our surviving texts ina
few sentences. The cause remains obscure, but current excavation has
provided testimony to the prosperity of the town and the brutality of the

6 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. vitt.73; cf. Gabba 1964 (B 41). Livy 1x.1—-7: cf. Crawford 1974 (B 144) no.
234; 1973 (F 39). Livy xxxvutt.56; xxxrx.§: cf. Richard, 1972 (C 122).

7 Lintortt 1983 (B 192); Sherwin-White 1982 (c 133); Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B
170). § Chevallier 1958 (E 3); Piganiol 1954 (E 22).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

6 1. THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC

repression. Seven years later the Romans founded their first colony in
southern Gaul, Narbo Martius (Narbonne). Cicero at least indicates to us
that the measure was controversial, but the colony might be dismissed as
a mere military outpost, had it not become clear from excavation that the
site was important commercially, perhaps even before the founding of
the colony.®

The problem, then, in the period from the Gracchan reforms to the
Sullan reaction is that the relative lack of source-material makes it
difficult to redress the selective and tendentious formulation of issues
and events in the accounts which we possess. Some fundamental aspects
of this bias will be considered in the next chapter. The corrective
required from the historian is not merely to be counter-suggestible in
face of the tradition, but to realize that the accounts of political conflicts,
though they reflect disputes which genuinely occurred, mask a great deal
of agreement in the governing class about how the city, Italy and the
overseas empire should be managed. This may be summed up as a more
controlled and thoroughgoing exploitation of the resources of the
Mediterranean. Some politicians maintained a more or less high-minded
conservatism about such exploitation. On the whole, however, the
competitive nature of the Roman aristocracy meant that politicians
would fiercely resist the plans of rivals, when these were alive, but
subsequently would not hesitate to endorse these measures and enjoy
their products.

I. ANCIENT THEORIES ABOUT THE LATE REPUBLIC

Polybius in his encomium of the Roman constitution in Book vi also
portended its subsequent decay. It was not immune from the process of
growth and decay according to nature, which was common to all
constitutions and was in form cyclic since it started with primitive
monarchy and returned to tyranny. Although the Roman Republic was
stabilized by a balance between the monarchic, oligarchic and democra-
tic elements, which prevented any part rapidly getting the upper hand, in
the long run it would succumb to the luxury and ambition arising from
its unchallenged empire. The greed of rich men would oppress the
people and the ambition of others would exploit this discontent. Then
the people would no longer wish to obey their leaders or share power
with them, but seek to dominate everything of importance. The
resulting freedom or democracy would be in truth mob-rule and a clear
beginning of the decline to tyranny. If this was written before 146 B.C., it
was a theoretical analysis which turned out to be prophetic. (Polybius
had made a similar judgement on C. Flaminius, the radical tribune of 232
9 Crawford and Keppie 1984 (B 284); Clemente 1974 (£ 6) 61ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ANCIENT THEORIES 7

who went on to be consul and censor.) However, it may have resulted
from Polybius revising his work during the Gracchan period. To judge
from the surviving fragments of Diodorus — in particular his characteri-
zation of C. Gracchus’ ambitions according to the classic model of the
demagogue and his denunciation of the greed of the equestrian order —
Polybius’ interpretation was followed by Posidonius. It also seems to
have influenced greatly subsequent Roman accounts.!0

Roman writers after the fall of the Republic were happy to claim that
this fall was inevitable. Rome was unable to bear the burden of its own
weight; the moral corruption arising from greed, luxury and ambition
had no external check, especially once the threat of Carthage had been
completely uprooted. Constitutional change was not seen as significant
in itself — largely, no doubt, because the Romans did not think that the
constitution had changed. However, for the poet Lucan and the
historian Florus there was a nexus linking wealth to poverty and both of
these to desires which only demagogy and ultimately civil war could
satisfy. Such explanations derived not just from Polybius and any other
historian who followed him but from warnings uttered by statesmen at
the time. According to Posidonius, Scipio Nasica opposed the destruc-
tion of Carthage on the ground that its existence forced the Romans to
rule their empire justly and honourably, while its destruction would
bring civil strife to Rome and weaken the foundations of the empire as
Roman magistrates could oppress their subjects without fear. Although
there is controversy about the ascription of these beliefs to Nasica, there
is no doubt that such ideas were in circulation in the middle of the second
century.

We cannot rehearse here the question, whether the destruction of
Carthage was such a critical event in the history of the Roman empire. A
more ruthless attitude abroad was already to be discerned earlier in the
century. Civil strife certainly became important after 146 B.c. when
Rome’s power was at a new height. As for luxury, greed and ambition
there was no question that these abounded in the second century. Sallust
schematically placed their onset after the fall of Carthage, but they were
denounced before this in the works of Cato the Censor, which Sallust
knew well, and in Polybius, as well as by the annalist L. Piso, a
contemporary of the Gracchi. Cato inveighed against slack and high-
handed magistrates, corpulence and expensive imports of pickled fish
from the Black Sea. Piso pilloried the decline of sexual chastity and the
acquisition of luxury furniture — sideboards and one-legged tables —
corruption which began with the triumph of Manlius Vulso in 186. At
the same time the psaltery- and sambuca-players had arrived with their

10 Polyb. v1.8.1-8; 9.10-14; 57.5—93 1.21.8; Diod. xxx1v/xxxv.27-9; Walbank 1972 (B 123) 130ff;
Malitz 1983 (B 69) 375.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8 I. THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC

Asiatic dances. About 130 Scipio Aemilianus deplored mixed dancing-
classes and the sexual licence which they were held to stimulate, in a
speech against the legislation of Ti. Gracchus. This neatly illustrates how
a connexion was made between general morality and political
radicalism."

Of course, greed for wealth and power were not vices suddenly
discovered by the Romans in 146 or indeed in the second century. There
is enough evidence from earlier times to suggest that the type of Roman
idealized by later ages, the Curius and Cincinnatus — a fighting farmer of
stern scruples, dedicated to the simple life and the work ethic — was, if
not a myth, at least not totally representative. Yet it would indeed be a
paradox to say that these vices had nothing to do with the crisis in the late
Republic. Appetites expanded with the Roman empire and the strains
produced by competition among the aristocracy are clearly in evidence
from the early second century onwards, not least in laws against bribery
(first in 181) and conspicuous extravagance in giving dinners (first in
182). One cannot completely discount the Romans’ own feeling about
what was wrong.

Nevertheless it is, and was, hard to explain the problems of the late
Republic simply in terms of aristocratic moral failings. Was the differ-
ence to be found not so much among the men who sat in the Senate as
among the legionaries? It is interesting that Sallust himself, while he talks
of the greed for wealth and power in the introduction to the Cass/ine, later
in that work and in his subsequent monograph, the Jugurtha, links the
acquisition of wealth with the creation of poverty among others, as
Polybius had suggested, in particular with the expulsion of peasant
families from their ancestral landholdings. The sufferings of the rural
population were a theme in the oratory of Tiberius Gracchus himself,
probably recorded for posterity in his brother’s memoir of him. The
expansion of the estates of the rich and the resentment of the plebs are
stated by Lucan and Florus to have been fundamental reasons for civil
strife: ‘hence might became the measure of right and domination of one’s
fatherland by force of arms respectable’. The agrarian problem also
dominates the early chapters of Appian’s Civi/ Wars, although here the
author links it directly with the conflicts over the reforming tribunes,
rather than with the civil war that eventually followed. It is only in his
account of the civil wars after Caesar’s murder that the desire of the
soldiers to improve their economic condition through fighting is
stressed. !2

The poverty caused by the greed of the wealthy was thus accepted by a

"Sal. Cat. ro—11; Ing. 41; H. 1.11-12M; Piso, fr. 34, cf. Livy xxx1x.6.7-8; Scipio Aemilianus,
ORF no. 21, fr. 30= Macrob. Saf. 111.14.6-7. See Lintott 1972 (a 63).
12 Lucan 1.16082; Florus 1.47.7-13; 1.1.1-2; App. BCiv. 1.7-27; v.17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ANCIENT THEORIES 9

number of Roman writers as a cause of civil conflict in the Forum and
ultimately of civil war, though this was sometimes seen more in moral
than socio-economic terms. The poor, it was held, fought not so much
because they were poor, but because poverty had embittered them and
made them violent and greedy themselves. Moreover, the griefs of the
poor were not thought to excuse their aristocratic leaders for clashes
with fellow-aristocrats. In spite of his appreciation of the miseries of the
plebs Sallust both in the Catiline and the Histories declared that the claim
of its leaders to be defending plebeian rights was fraudulent: like the
leaders of the Senate, they were using honourable pretexts to seek
personal power — a judgement deriving from Thucydides’ account of
civil strife at Corcyra in 427 B.c. Florus writes in the same vein, when
assessing the Gracchi. Their measures appeared just, but they damaged
the wealth of the state and the interest of the possessing classes
(themselves part of the people): in reality they and other tribunes sought
domination for their office rather than protection for the rights of the
people.

An exception to the general hostility of historians to the demagogic
tribunes is the friendly treatment of the Gracchi to be found in both
Plutarch and Appian. One explanation offered for this is that C.
Gracchus’ own account of his brother and himself was their ultimate
source. However, apart from this the talents and romantic aura of the
Gracchi (deriving from their illustrious background and their tragic
deaths) made them the favourite demagogues of those in principle
opposed to demagogy. Cicero cleverly exploits their names both to
disparage other demagogues by comparison and to assert his own
adherence to popular principles. This privileged status was not shared by
men like Saturninus, Glaucia or P. Sulpicius. Perhaps only one source
shows obliquely the case that might be made for radical tribunes — the
Aid Herennium, an oratorical handbook which seems to have been written
in the eighties and quotes powerful examples of popular rhetoric
denouncing enemies of the plebs.'3 As for its conservative opponents,
whatever historians believed about the corruption of the aristocracy, the
most obstinate defenders of the status quo — men like L. Opimius,
Metellus Numidicus and Cato Uticensis — were revered for this adher-
ence to principle, in the same way that the hard men of the early
Republic, the Appii Claudii, Papirius Cursor and Manlius Torquatus,
were awesome figures in the annals of that period.

The military leaders who undertook civil war were bitterly criticized
by their contemporaries and not surprisingly much of this survives in
later sources. Sulla was remembered for his proscriptions (the emperor

‘3, Rhet. Her. 1v.31, 48, 68, cf. Cic. Verr. v.163; Leg. Agr. 11.10, 31; Rab. Perd. 14; Har. Resp. 41-3;
Clu. 151; Font. 39; Brut. 125-6; De Or. 1.38.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

10 1. THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC

Septimius Severus was unusual in openly praising them in contrast to
Caesar’s clemency) and Sallust also indicted him for beginning the
corruption of troops through slack discipline in order to secure loyal
adherents in civil war. Marius’ reputation never really recovered from its
handling by his political opponents, not least Sulla. Pompey was treated
mildly by writers under Augustus as the man who in theory represented
law and order, but the pointed attacks made on him in the late Republic
were not forgotten and for Lucan, Seneca and Tacitus he is as
blameworthy as Caesar. As the Principate progressed, writers became
less obsessed with naming the guilty men. Cassius Dio is particularly
remarkable for refraining from denunciation of individuals, though he
has much to say about corruption in general. However, by that time the
death of the Republic seemed so remote and so natural an event that
post-mortem analysis had become truly academic.

II. MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE LATE REPUBLIC

Historiography since the Renaissance has been reluctant to accept the
Roman aristocracy’s explanation of why it was overthrown, though it
has selectively exploited specific items in that explanation. Machiavelli in
his Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T. Livio, although he adopted Polybius’
view that Rome’s mixed constitution was a virtue, believed the violent
conflicts between Senate and plebs that shook early Rome to have been a
blessing because they created freedom. As for the conflicts that began
with the Gracchi, these certainly led to a destruction of liberty, but they
were an inevitable consequence of Rome’s greatness. For they could
only have been avoided if the Romans had renounced using the plebs in
war or admitting foreigners to citizenship, and in that case Rome would
never have had the power to obtain her empire. Thus militarism and
multiracialism were at the root of the Republic’s decline. A further
awkward consequence of the extension of empire was the prolongation
of military commands, which led the citizen to forget the Senate and
recognize the leadership only of its own commanders. The Republic
would have lasted longer if Rome had solved this problem and also that
of ‘la legge agraria’, which, Machiavelli recognized, produced strife fatal
to the Republic.'4

Machiavelli’s position is intriguingly provocative: he has in fact
turned Polybius upside down. The virtue of the Roman constitution is
not the stability that consists in tightly interlocked parts but the balance
which comes from free play in a tumultuous conflict. Moreover, he has
distanced himself from the aristocratic view of Polybius and Roman

‘4 Discorsi (ed. A. Oxilia (London, 1955). Trans. L. J. Walker. London, 1970) 1.2, 4, 5, 6, 373
11.24,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MODERN INTERPRETATIONS II

writers. The tumults are not to be blamed on the plebs and its leaders.
Rather, the Romans should not have allowed conflicts to get out of hand
and they should have exercised greater control over their armies. It
should be stressed that Machiavelli regarded the strife between ‘i grandi’
and ‘la plebe’ as genuine, not factitious: indeed the hostility between the
two bodies transcended any specific issue.

Machiavelli had the benefit of writing at a time when the social and
political organization of cities bore some resemblance to that of
Republican Rome. If anything, he makes Rome look less sophisticated
than it was. A little over two centuries later, similar themes are found in
Montesquieu’s Considérations sur la grandeur et décadence des romains. It is the
soldiers’ attachment to generals entrusted with great commands by the
tribunes which in his view overthrew the Republic, while the turbulence
of the city is ascribed to the increase in citizenship, which created a
divided community where all did not share the old Roman values.
Nevertheless he regards the urban violence in general as a necessary
accompaniment to imperial success, since a brave and warlike people
would not be submissive in domestic affairs.'5

When Mommsen came to write in the nineteenth century his funda-
mental Rémische Geschichte, he did not apply the standards of the German
people at the time but those of contemporary British parliamentary
democracy. In his analysis of politics at the time of the Gracchi he
discounted the democratic element in the Roman constitution, on the
ground that their assemblies were not, like a parliament, representative
of the people as a whole. Moreover, he treated the conflict between the
supporters of senatorial dominance, whom the Romans called optimates,
and the populares, who in fact acted through the assemblies in the popular
interest, as something carried on in the Roman Senate, similar to the
party conflicts between Liberals and Conservatives in the British
parliament. He therefore found it easy to accept Sallust’s view that
Roman politics was simply an unscrupulous struggle for power between
members of the aristocracy, on the ground that the elections, which gave
Romans office and thereby in due course a seat in the Senate, were not
contested on programmes and political principles but on personality. He
clearly thought that the British parliamentary system in his day was truly
representative of popular feeling. If he had written after Namier, he
might have been disposed to compare the Senate to the British
parliament of the eighteenth century.!¢

The Roman tradition about moral corruption and the disruption of
the constitution by power-seeking demagogues was therefore quite

'5 Considérations (GEuvres complétes v1, ed. R. Caillois. Paris, 1949), chs. 8, 9.
‘6 Mommsen 1854-6 (a 76) vol. rv, ch. 2; L. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of
George III, 2nd edn, (London, 1968).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

12 1. THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC

acceptable to Mommsen, except that he believed that the political system
deserved to be overthrown — both because of the oppression of peasant
farmers in Italy by the rich through the monopolization of the land and
the extensive use of slaves and because of inefficiency and corruption in
managing the empire. He believed that there ought to have been a
political struggle against the nobility and the capitalist landowners but
there was not in fact, or only accidentally through the medium of the
demagogues. These were too preoccupied with the status quo or their
own aspirations within the system to make effective reforms, but they
pointed the way to a revolution by their monarchic ambitions, if only
they had based these on the people as a whole and not on the city-mob. In
his view the Roman empire under the Republic was managed by a
corrupt clique of incompetent men, whom the people were powerless to
control constitutionally. This regime merited and eventually underwent
a complete revolution through military force, which subjected it to a
monarch, who did represent the people of the empire — Caesar.

For Mommsen the collapse of the Republic ceases to be a problem. It
was simply a matter of waiting for the one perennially successful
department of the res publica, the army, to take over. Yet this view is an
outsider’s view with a vengeance: in disdaining to judge the Romans in
context and by standards which they themselves might have endorsed, it
contrasts not only with the ancient sources but with the sympathetic
views of Machiavelli and Montesquieu. The analysis is still fundamental
to much historical scholarship of today, though Mommsen’s successors
have tried to view events more from inside and forborne to make his
sweeping judgements. Their attitudes to the Republic have been
tempered by the fact that even Mommsen himself came to realize that his
enthusiasm for the monarchy of the Caesars was misplaced.

Mommsen’s followers have tended to accept that the late Republic
was a fundamentally aristocratic state, in which the democratic element
was bogus — an appeal to a corrupt city-mob. They have differed in their
view of the monarchic ambitions of those who tried to dominate the
political process. In particular Eduard Meyer argued that, while Caesar
sought to be an absolute monarch, Pompey aspired to a principate, a
monarchy within the existing oligarchy, which was a precedent for
Augustus. Mommsen’s modernizing view of the political struggle has
also been rejected. The nature of aristocratic politics was above all
analysed by Gelzer and Miinzer. Gelzer showed the way that the
aristocracy tended to monopolize office and power through family
connexions and clients. Furthermore, he explained the meaning of the
terms optimates and populares: the former described the majority, some-
times even the whole, of the governing class, who defended the
authority of the Senate and the status quo; the latter were individuals or

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MODERN INTERPRETATIONS 13

small groups with little or no organization or coherence over a period,
who chose to work politically through the assemblies rather than to
submit to majority opinion in the Senate. This view fitted the evidence
better than Mommsen’s parliamentary model and accounted for the
monarchic style and aspirations of leading popu/ares.!7

Miinzer went further in arguing on the basis of his prosopographical
inquiries that the true parties in the aristocracy were small factions based
on family, which struggled for supremacy with any weapon that lay to
hand — manipulation of clients, demagogy and ultimately violence and
civil war. Whereas Mommsen had applied Sallust’s bleak judgement on
the speciousness of the values of optimates and populares mainly to the
populares and saw them as the chief aspirants to tyrannical power, Miinzer
believed that the optimates also each sought dominance for their group in
a narrow oligarchy. This approach found its most eloquent expression in
Syme’s The Roman Revolution, which applied this doctrine to the last
decades of the Republic and the civil wars — a period when the prevalence
of force over law makes it most plausible. Politics after 49 B.c. became
patently a power struggle and that conflict was to some extent foresha-
dowed in the non-military conflicts of the previous twenty years.
Miinzer’s approach has also greatly influenced the work of Badian,
although he takes factional conflict to have been based on much more
flexible groupings than a rigid interpretation of Miinzer’s work would
suggest.

On the other hand historians influenced more by Gelzer, for example
Strasburger and L. R. Taylor, have argued that the confrontation
between optimates and populares was not entirely unprincipled or devoid
of ideology: what distinguished the two groups was attitudes to political
method rather than political programmes. Christian Meier in his major
study, Res Publica Amissa, suggested that the aristocracy only used the
plebs to secure its own interests or to benefit small interest-groups that
were unrepresentative of the people as a whole. There was a popularis
ideology, but it was obsolescent, sincé the assemblies were not the
people and major issues of liberty, especially the right of provocatio which
safeguarded the citizens from arbitrary arrest and execution, were no
longer in question. Such views tend to deny any important conflict
within the aristocratic political system and stress its stability. Meier
indeed holds that the complexity and impermanence of political group-
ings in conjunction with the multiplicity of ties of dependence comple-
tely rule out the clear-cut factional struggle presupposed by Miinzer and
to some extent by Badian. He even suggests that the patron—client
relationships of the aristocracy imported a genuinely representative
element into senatorial practice. The system was brought down by

'7 Meyer 1922 (c 227); Gelzer 1912 (A 40); Miinzer 1920 (A 79).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

14 I. THE CRISIS OF THE REPUBLIC

factors which the aristocracy failed to assimilate properly, the wealthy
men outside the Senate in the equestrian order and the professional
armies under long-serving commanders.'8

A still more flattering view of the late Republic has been propounded
by Erich Gruen in The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. While
accepting the thesis that the essence of politics was the struggle of family
factions, he argues that they were on the whole carried out within certain
limits, conventionally understood rather than constitutional, since a
modicum of violence was acceptable. Only civil war endangered this
system and this was the product of exceptional circumstances. From the
opposite point of view the author of this chapter has argued in Violence in
Republican Rome that it was precisely because the aristocracy tolerated a
modicum of violence that the genuine conflicts between the popular
leaders and the rest of the aristocracy became unmanageable and
spiralled upwards into civil war.

Other historians, for example Brunt and de Martino, have returned to
the theme of struggle between class-interests as the unbalancing factor.
However, unlike Mommsen and his followers, they believe that this was
reflected in the conflict between optimates and populares. They concede
that Gelzer rightly interpreted these terms and that the men did not form
organized political parties, but believe that this does not exclude the
representation by the populares of the class-interests of the common
people. The motives of the demagogic leaders are irrelevant: what
matters is that they could only gain influence by satisfying genuine
popular discontent. Yet to an extent these historians are at one with
Mommsen in believing that the only way the discontent of the poor
could effectively express itself was through civil war.!9

Most modern interpretations share the same appreciation of what
actually happened and of the legal and social background against which
it happened. Historians are in agreement also that political groupings
were not parties in the modern sense, even if there is no sharply defined
unanimity about what they really were. There is uncertainty, however, as
to how far popularis activity can be subsumed in the aristocratic political
game or should be treated as something subversive of aristocratic
dominance: what in fact did popularis leaders think they were doing? It
has at least been rightly stressed that not only Cicero but even Sallust on
occasion states that the optimate and popularis views of politics were
genuinely opposed and irreconcilable.20 The most unanswerable
questions concern the degree of plebeian self-consciousness. It is

18 Syme 1952 (A 118); Badian 1985 (A 1); Taylor 1949 (A 120); Strasburger 1939 (A 116); Meier
1966 (A 72).

19 Gruen 1974 (c 209); Lintott 1968 (A 62); Brunt 1971 (A 17), 1988 (A 19); de Martino 1973 (A 71).

20 Perelli 1982 (A 90) 25-69.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MODERN INTERPRETATIONS 15

difficult to talk of class-consciousness or a broadly agreed community of
interests among the poor. We may still wonder whether the plebeians did
articulate grievances and demands, whether they were generally con-
scious of their rights and liberties as something achieved by earlier
plebeian struggles and not gifts from above: might some of them even
have viewed civil wars as revolutionary activities or at least deliberate
blows against their oppressors?

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 2

THE ROMAN EMPIRE ANDITS PROBLEMS IN
THE LATE SECOND CENTURY

ANDREW LINTOTT

Traditionally, foreign affairs come first in histories of the middle
Republic, domestic politics in those of the late Republic. Yet, although
developments in Rome and Italy came to overshadow all else in the fifty
years after the destruction of Carthage, it is wrong to write as if the
Romans, as it were, changed trains in 146 B.c. In fact Rome’s expansion
abroad, because of the power and wealth it created for both the res publica
and individuals and because of the accompanying problems, continued
to be the main stimulus for political changes.

Polybius claimed in passages probably written between 167 and 146
that the Romans had become masters of the world with which his history
dealt. This did not mean that they administered the whole area or even
that they were interested in what was happening in every part, but that
ultimately they expected their will to be obeyed in matters affecting their
interests here.! It was a hegemony that even after 146 was looser than
those of the great Hellenistic powers had been in their smaller spheres of
influence, but as stern or sterner when Roman power was concentrated
on a particular trouble spot. The methods by which this hegemony was
exercised have been discussed in the previous volume. There was
fighting almost every year in one part of the Mediterranean or another,
but more often than not the Romans exerted power without direct
recourse to arms. In the territories administered by Rome in the West the
focus was the Roman magistrate or pro-magistrate in whose province
the territory was. No Roman magistrates were regularly based east of the
Adriatic before 148: embassies were here the chief channel of Roman
control. Foreign envoys came to winter in Rome bringing complaints
from the injured and self-justification from the suspect; in the spring
Roman embassies left for foreign parts to investigate problems, recon-
cile allies and, where necessary, to coerce.

Their effectiveness was mixed. The Romans failed to save Orophernes
of Cappadocia in 157 or Prusias of Bithynia in 149; they failed to obtain
for Ptolemy Euergetes II the possession of Cyprus as well as Cyrene
during the reign of his brother. On the other hand, though their methods

1 Derow 1979 (B 26); Brunt 1978 (A 18); Lintott 1981 (a 64).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN EMPIRE 17

were far from attractive, they kept the kingdom of Syria weak — by
burning its fleet and hamstringing its elephants after the death of
Antiochus I'V and later by using a pretender to harass Demetrius I, who
contrary to their intentions had become Antiochus’ successor. Where
they believed a serious threat to their security and hegemony existed,
they acted ruthlessly. Carthage and Macedonia fell victim within a few
years to a resumption of serious military activity, while the Achaeans,
more a nuisance than a threat, paid the penalty of defiance when in too
close proximity to a Roman army. Carthage was destroyed in order to
eliminate a stronghold of anti-Roman feeling and a power base which
could rival Rome. So too was Corinth, not so much through fear but as a
deliberate act of frightfulness to mark the beginning of a new era in
Greece.?

In consequence, the area of direct Roman administration was
increased, with Punic Africa, Macedonia and parts of Greece now
directly subjected to Roman magistrates. Nevertheless, it does not seem
at first sight that the pattern has changed. The embassies sent by the
Romans to settle the dispute in Numidia between Jugurtha and his
brothers from 116 onwards resemble those sent forty years before to stop
the war between Pergamum and Bithynia. In the Roman law of 101-100
engraved at Delphi and Cnidus the senior consul is instructed, as part ofa
campaign to put down piracy, to write to the kings in Syria, Egypt,
Cyprus and Cyrene and to give a special audience to the Rhodians.3 Yet
Jugurtha died in the Mamertine prison after Roman military interven-
tion, while the pirates were directly attacked by Roman forces in their
homeland. This intervention can be explained by asserting that Roman
interests were more directly involved than, for example, in Asia Minor
before 150, but this increased involvement itself requires explanation.

The spread of Roman administration to Africa in 146 and to Asia in
133 onwards (to which we will return) is clearly relevant. So too is the
presence of Romans and Italians as private individuals in these areas.
There is solid evidence for the settlement of Romans and Italians in Sicily
and Spain; the evidence for their presence in other regions of the
Mediterranean is more scattered but equally important. The family of the
Rammii, for example, is now attested in Thessaly in the middle of the
third century and it was surely a Roman who about 200 set up the
genealogy of Romulus and Remus on Chios. Perhaps the most exotic
piece of evidence is an Egyptian papyrus, dated to ¢. 200-150, recording
a maritime loan for a voyage to the ‘Scent-Producing Land’ of the Horn
of Africa. Most of those involved are Greek Egyptians, but one of the

2 Off. 1.35 has Cicero’s verdict on Corinth. See in general Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) ch. 2; éd.

1977 (p 75); Accame 1946 (D 250).
3 Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170) 202-3; cf. Sall. Jug. 15; 215 25.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

18 19

SA ATIANS

Pontus Euxsinus
(Black Sea)

. THwaacrAns

® i. = , y

é 2 NIA n - Nico
wi esto ay uy 2

ogee & ? Perganwm = * CAPPADOCIA

C ASIA ae qeurvé M

2, : . Ti

— Ss

SYRIA

-Apamea [d]

/ oe
v

MAURETANIA NUMIDIA

CYRENAICA

t The Roman world about 118 BG

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

20 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

traders is from Marseilles (Massilia), the guarantors include another
Massiliot, a Carthaginian and a man from Velia in Italy, while the go-
between is called Cnaeus.4

After 150 B.c. the evidence for the dispersion of Romans and Italians
increases but the problem of quantification remains. The number of
adult male Romans of Roman or Italian descent resident in Spain in 50
B.C. has been put as low as 30,000. The figures given for the massacres of
Romans or Italians by Mithridates in 88 B.c. — 80,000—150,000 in Asia and
20,000 on Delos and the other Aegean islands — are likely to have been
grossly inflated by pro-Roman sources (conceivably they include the
slaves of Italian households). The evidence from Roman and Italian
names inscribed in Greece, mainly at Delos, is sounder, but its impli-
cations uncertain. It is clear that, after Delos was assigned to Athens for
administration and madea free port by Rome in 166, a number of Italians
with their freedmen and slaves made Delos one of their bases for
business activities or retirement. They associated in collegia (lodges),
which maintained cults of the Lares Compitales, Mercury, Apollo and
Hercules and dedicated shrines and fora to them. However, Delos was
arguably exceptional because of its importance as a trading centre,
especially for slaves. A very plausible case has been made that the Forum
of the Italians — a large unpaved court with two narrow access passages,
which was surrounded by small rooms and whose cult-statue had a grille
to protect it — was in fact a slave-market.5 However, even if we must
renounce any attempt to measure the numbers of Roman and Italian
emigrants abroad, there are two significant features of this movement,
the acquisition of land abroad by Romans and Italians, particularly by
men of substance, and the settlement by the community of veteran
soldiers overseas, both in formal colonies and on individual plots. These
will be analysed in greater detail in the regional surveys that follow.

I. SPAIN

Spain had been one of the spoils of the Second Punic War, sufficiently
important for the Romans to have increased the number of praetors to
six iN 197 B.C. in order to provide regular magistrates for two provinces,
Citerior (Nearer) and Ulterior (Further). The two commands were
separated at a point west of Carthago Nova by a boundary, which must
have become more theoretical the more it extended into the partially
subdued interior. Much fighting had taken place up to and including the
governorship of Tiberius Gracchus (cos. 177) in 179-178. His settlement

4 Sammelbuch 11 (1926) no. 7169.

5 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 224-33. Cf. Val. Max. 1x.2 ext. 3; Memnon, FGrH 434 F 22; Plut. Sudla 24.4;
Strab. x.5.3 (486); xv.5.2 (664). Coarelli 1982 (B 276).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SPAIN 21

of the province produced a lull until 155, when fighting was resumed
against the so-called ‘autonomous Lusitanians’ in the west of the
peninsula and spread, partly through unprovoked Roman aggression,
partly through co-operation between the Spanish peoples under the
leadership of Viriathus, to the Vaccaei and ultimately to the Numantines
in the north. These wars, which were characterized by Roman repudia- -
tion of agreements made with the Spaniards by Fabius Aemilianus, Q.
Pompeius and C. Hostilius Mancinus, ended with the siege and destruc-
tion of Numantia at the hands of Scipio Aemilianus as consul in 134. (A
full account of operations up to this point is to be found in Vol. vit, pp.
118-42.) All the Iberian peninsula except the far north-west was now
subject to the Romans, at least formally. We have references to later
fighting in Spain between 114 and 111 (the proconsul L. Piso Frugi being
killed then), in 104-102 against the Lusitanians and from 98 to 93 against
the Arevaci and Celtiberi under T. Didius (cos. 98). This last war was
notorious for Didius’ treacherous massacre of the whole population of
Colenda, a settlement founded by his predecessor. It is significant that, as
Appian remarked, these wars were not begun at times when the Romans
were preoccupied in Gaul and Italy with the threat of the northern
tribes.6

The value of Spain to the Romans, as to the Carthaginians before
them, lay in its provision of auxiliary soldiers, especially cavalry and
light-armed troops, grain and above all base and precious metals.
Polybius stated that within a circuit of 20 stades (4 kilometres) round
New Carthage there were 40,000 workers in the silver-mines, whose
product was worth 25,000 denarii a day. According to Diodorus, some
individual prospectors extracted a Euboic talent (6,000 denarii) in three
days, and he refers to Italians who employed slave-labour and intro-
duced more technology into the workings with elaborate underground
tunnels drained by Archimedian screws. Interesting in this context is the
first appearance of what we may call a Roman provincial coinage, the
Iberian denarius. These are silver coins with local types and legends, but
struck to the Roman denarius standard (just under 4g) and bearing the
denarius sign (XX). They come from northern Spain, especially Osca near
the Ebro and are believed to have been current from ¢. 200-150 B.C.
down to Sertorius’ time. It is most probable that their function was to be
a convenient means for the Spaniards to pay their taxes and the Romans
to pay for Spanish goods and services in return.? Rome had imposed
general levies in goods and money on the Spaniards from 197, although

6 App. Hisp. 99.428-100.437. See Lopez Melero 1984 (B 193) and Richardson 1986 (E25) 199ff for
a recently discovered inscription from Alcantara recording a surrender (deditio) in 104.

7 ILS 8888; Polyb. xxx1v.9.8—11; Strab. 111.2.10 (148); Diod. v.36-8; Richardson 1976 (e 24);
Crawford 1985 (B 145) 84ff; Knapp, 1977 (B 179).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

22 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

the exactions originally would not have fallen uniformly on all subject
Spaniards but only on the peoples within reach of the current Roman
officials. A regular tribute was probably laid down by Ti. Gracchus (cos.
177) during his governorship in 179, but it was disregarded by some
peoples and there was a reassessment in Celtiberia by M. Marcellus in 152
(the total tribute paid there was to be 3,600,000 denarii). The Spaniards
were, as far as we know, the first provincials to complain about Roman
injustice in these exactions (in 171): the charges included the use of
military prefects to collect money, corruption in commuting grain-
contributions into money and corruption in farming out a 5 per cent tax
(probably a levy on sales or transit).®

We know little of the administration of Spain. Apart from the initial
division of powers in 197, it is likely that there was a long process of
giving legal recognition to Spanish communities and assigning them
territory, in which the governorships of M. Cato (195), Ti. Gracchus
(179-178) and M. Marcellus (15 2-151) were high points. We hear later of
ten-man senatorial commissions assisting Scipio Aemilianus in 134 and
T. Didius in the nineties. Two important linked features of the
administration were Romano-Italian immigration and the creation of
towns. Italica, the later birthplace of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian,
was settled with Roman veterans by Scipio Africanus in 206; in 171
Carteia was founded as a Latin colony for the offspring of Roman fathers
and Spanish mothers (who were not by Roman law full Roman citizens).
Corduba, the creation of M. Marcellus, was probably another Latin
colony, as were Palma and Pollentia, established in 123 by Q. Metellus in
the Balearic islands for 3,000 Romans from Spain. Apart from full
Roman citizens living in Spain, thére must have been many of mixed
Romano-Hispanic descent like the settlers at Carteia and the bandit-
chiefs, Curius and Apuleius, who took part in the Viriathic War. Some of
these were granted full Roman citizenship (perhaps after military service
or a magistracy in a Latin community) and thus we find later Roman
senators like Q. Varius Hybrida and L. Fabius Hispaniensis. Communi-
ties were also created for Spaniards without Roman or Latin status.
About 190 L. Aemilius Paulus granted the servi of the Hastenses living in
the turris Lascutana their liberty and land to occupy; Gracchus founded
Gracchurris near the Ebro and later Iliturgi in Baetica; D. Brutus (cos.
138) created Valentia for Spaniards who had fought under Viriathus and
also Brutobriga (see Vol. vii’, pp. 118-42).

The extent to which the demarcation of communities and the
foundation or confirmation of local administrations had proceeded
within fifty years of the fall of Numantia is shown by a remarkable
document, which has recently come to light at Contrebia in Celtiberian

8 App. Hisp. 43.179-44.183; Strab. 111.4.13 (162-3); Livy xxiit.2z.12.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GAUL 23

territory. A bronze inscription records a judicial decision by the
governor, C. Valerius Flaccus, in 87 B.c. regarding a dispute over the
purchase of land and water-rights involving three villages. The gover-
nor behaves like a Roman praetor in a private lawsuit, laying down a
series of formulae according to which the judges, in this case the senate
of Contrebia, are to judge the case. All the judges are Spanish. Yet the
document is in Latin and the procedure used is a uniquely Roman one.
This unparalleled piece of evidence gives a fascinating glimpse of the
extent to which Roman ideas and methods were coming to prevail in
Spain.°

II GAUL

The southern part of Transalpine Gaul was the land-link between Italy
and Spain. The Roman connexion with this area went back to their first
alliance with Massilia (Marseilles), said to have been made ¢. 400 B.c.
This alliance had been reinforced through co-operation during the
Second Punic War, but in spite of considerable expansion in Cisalpine
Gaul (Vol. viir?, pp. 107-18) — as far as Genua in the west (linked with
Cremona by the Via Postumia in 148) and Aquileia in the east — there had
been little Roman intervention on the far side of the Alps. In 155/4 the
Massilians had asked for help against the Ligurians living in the region of
Antibes and Monaco, and a Roman land-expedition led by Q. Opimius
from Cisalpina secured their renewed subjection to Massilia. Excavation
at native Celtic or Celto-Iberic sites on or near the south coast of France
has revealed a great deal of black-glaze Campanian ware and Italian
amphorae of wine and oil imported during the second century B.c. The
area was thus well known to traders from Italy, though there is no sure
evidence of Italians settling. The evidence of direct Roman political
influence consists of two highly controversial texts: Polybius’ remarks
about the measuring of the later Via Domitia from Gades to the Alps
may be a late addition and need not refer to events before 125 B.c., while
Cicero’s statement about the Roman veto on the planting of vines and
olives among the Transalpine tribes comes among other assertions that
have an element of folklore.!°

Massilia’s cultural influence was strong. The education she provided
for leading Gauls led to their using Greek letters to write Celtic and the
Greek language itself for legal purposes. She may even have purveyed
agricultural and military technology. Yet her military power was by now

® Richardson 1983 (B 227); Birks, Rodger and Richardson 1984 (B 133). On the growth of Roman
influence in Spain see Richardson 1986 (£ 25) 172M.

10 ILLRP 432, Polyb. xxxitt.g—10; 1.39.8; Strab. 1v.1.5 (180~1); 6.3 (203); Cic. Rep. 111.16
(accepted by Goudineau in Nicolet 1978 (A 83) 11.685-9); Clemente 1974 (E 6) 19.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

24 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

relatively weak. Thus in 125 B.c. an attack on her by the Salluvii gave the
Romans a reason for intervention. Fulvius Flaccus (cos. 125) and Sextius
Calvinus (cos. 124) successively defeated the Ligurians, Salluvii and
Vocontii and succeeded in opening a corridor of communication about a
mile wide between Cisalpina and Massiliot territory, where Sextius
planted a garrison at Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence) below the Celtic
citadel of Entremont. Under Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 122) and
Q. Fabius Maximus (cos. 121) these operations were extended into a
conquest of southern Transalpine Gaul. The Allobroges, north of the
Isére, were attacked on the ground that they were harbouring a Salluvian
chief and had made war on the Aedui, who were friends of Rome. The
Arverni from the Cevennes were also drawn into this conflict, no doubt
because their chief Bituitus claimed supremacy over the other tribes in
the area. The Gauls were comprehensively defeated at the confluence of
the Rhone and the Isére (according to Roman sources, with enormous
casualties) and Domitius eventually celebrated his success by riding
through the new province on an elephant.!!

As a result the Gauls as far as Toulouse were subjected to tribute; a
Roman road was built along the old route from Emporiae to the Rhone;
further, in 118 Domitius Ahenobarbus joined with a young orator, L.
Licinius Crassus, in legislating for the foundation of the colony Narbo
Martius (Narbonne), south of the Celtic settlement of Montlaurés. The
subjected peoples did not rebel against Roman administration, but
within a few years Roman armies suffered serious defeats by trihes from
outside the province — L. Cassius by a section of the Helvetii who had
migrated to Aquitania (107), M. Silanus (109), Q. Caepio and Cn. Mallius
(105) at the hands of the Cimbri from beyond the Rhine at Arausio
(Orange). During his campaign Caepio seized 15 million denarii-worth
of uncoined silver and gold from the Celtic sacred treasuries near Tolosa
(Toulouse). The area then became the base for C. Marius’ defence of the
empire against the Germanic tribes in 104~102, which led to the defeat of
the Teutones and Ambrones near Aquae Sextiae. A by-product was the
construction of the Rhone canal, whose transit-dues Marius assigned to
the Massiliots as a reward for their services against the Germans.

The initial invasion could be justified by the need to protect Massilia,
but the subsequent operations seem to reproduce the familiar Roman
pattern of the pursuit of military glory for its own sake, while political
support for the establishment of Roman power may have been furnished
by Romans who had realized the economic potential of the region and
wished to be able to buy land there. Fifty years after its foundation the
province abounded with Roman citizens, especially businessmen. Ear-

"1 See also Livy Per. x1; Val. Max. 1x.6.3; Strab. tv.1.11 (185); 2.3 (191); Posidonius, Jac. FGrH
87 F 18; App. Celt. 1.7; 12.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SICILY 25

lier, before 85 3B.c. at least, Cicero’s client C. Quinctius formed a
partnership there with Sex. Naevius to undertake both ranching and
agriculture or arboriculture. The partnership also acquired slaves to sell
in Italy, possibly in exchange for wine. There is also epigraphic and
numismatic evidence for Roman immigration and influence on
commerce.'!2

III. SICILY

Agricultural exploitation is central to the history of the next province to
be considered — Sicily (about events and organization in Corsica and
Sardinia we have too little evidence for a worthwhile discussion). After
Syracuse’s defection and recapture in the Second Punic War there was no
rival in Sicily to Roman administration. Though three cities had treaties
with Rome and five had been declared free cities, immune from tribute,
the rest paid tithes on agricultural produce according to a system once
created by Hiero II of Syracuse. Some land had been confiscated —
notably the rich ager Leontinus — and was rented out to Romans, Italians
or Sicilians by the censors. We know of a colony being settled at
Agrigentum (?197), presumably of ex-soldiers. Further early evidence of
Italian immigration is a dedication by the ‘Italicei’ at the free city of
Halaesa. Nevertheless the Greek part of the island was still firmly Greek,
as an inscription recording the itinerary of theoroi, religious envoys from
Delphi, shows.'3

In our period Sicily was convulsed by two slave revolts (138/7-132
and 104-101) which are important not only in themselves but also
because of the social and economic conditions that are said to have
produced them. According to Posidonius,'* the first revolt was caused
by one Damophilus, a Greek owner of a large estate devoted to ranching
at Henna, who provoked his slaves into killing his wife and himself as the
beginning of a general uprising. The first leader was Eunus, a Syrian
from Apamea with a reputation for magic and miracle-working, who
assumed the royal name of Syria, Antiochus. In the south-west of Sicily
near Agrigentum another leader arose, a Cilician called Cleon. Enor-
mous numbers are ascribed to the rebels by our sources — 20,000 rising to
200,000 — though Posidonius merely puts Eunus’ original force at 6,000
and Cleon’s at 5,000. The slaves are said to have been partly herdsmen

'2 Road —- ILLRP 466a. Treasure — Strab. 1v.1.13 (188); Pos., FGrH 87 F 33. Cic. Quinct. 11-12.
Cf. on wine A. Tchernia, ‘Italian wine in Gaul at the end of the Republic’, in Garnsey 1983 (G 101)
87-104; on ‘monnaies 4 la croix’ Clemente 1974 (E 6) 80-1; on inscriptions Rolland 1955 (a 235).

'3 Cic. 1 Verr. 3.13-145 5.56; 4.1233 Phil. 1.101; Leg. Agr. 1.57; ILLRP 320; Manganaro 1964 (B
197).

‘4 FGrH 87 F 108 = Diod. xxxtv/v.2.2ff. Cf. Florus 11.7.4ff. Vogt 1974 (a 123) 39-92. Second
revolt — Diod. xxxvr.3ff; Florus 11.7. 10ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

26 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

and partly agricultural slaves working in chain-gangs. They received
some support from the local free population, which was delighted to see
the sufferings of the rich, and it was more destructive than the slaves, in
that it looted and plundered recklessly, whereas the slaves did not fire or
ravage the farms they hoped to use themselves. Eight commanders were
involved in fighting the revolt before M. Perperna and P. Rupilius
brought it to an end by recapturing Henna and Tauromeniun, killing
Cleon and capturing Eunus alive.

In 104 the pattern was repeated. The occasion was the attempt by the
governor to implement a senatus consultum urging the release of citizens of
allied communities, who had been forced into service as slaves in the
provinces. Eight hundred men were quickly released, but Nerva then
abandoned his task under pressure from the local nobility. After some
sporadic outbreaks a major uprising of 2,000-6,o00 men occurred at
Heraclea, led by a flute-player called Salvius, who played at orgiastic
religious ceremonies for women and had a reputation for divination. He
was given the rank of king and the name Tryphon (held by a previous
Syrian king). In the territory of Segesta and Lilybaeum the herdsmen
rebelled under a Cilician shepherd, Athenion, who took a silver sceptre
and purple robe and was crowned as king. As before, the free poor joined
in the revolt, and their destructiveness contrasted with Athenion’s care
for what he thought to be his own property. Although on this occasion
the towns remained secure, the slaves there were suspected of being
ready to join the rebels. The praetor who succeeded Nerva in 103, L.
Lucullus, defeated Tryphon and Athenion in the field, but Athenion
escaped to maintain the struggle for another two years until he was killed
and his supporters slowly eliminated by M’. Aquillius.

Posidonius’ introduction to the first revolt has a strong moralizing
tone and is carefully harmonized with his general view of decadence after
the fall of Carthage deriving from the greed and lawlessness of Romans
in the provinces. The rich landowners in Sicily are said to have been
mostly Roman knights, who are anachronistically credited with control
of the lawcourts. They neglected to clothe or feed properly the vast
numbers of slaves they possessed and so turned them into brigands. In
fact we do not hear specifically of any Roman slave-owners in the first
revolt, although in the second revolt P. Clonius, Vettius and the Varii
brothers are mentioned. Furthermore, Posidonius’ picture of society in
Sicily is distorted in that it neglects the Greek landowners and in
particular the less wealthy proprietors who were the core of the citizen
body in the Greek cities. However, it would be wrong to abandon
Posidonius’ view entirely and argue that these were Sicilian nationalist
revolts. The oriental origins and royal aspirations of the leaders confirm
what is in any case probable, that many of the slaves involved had been

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

AFRICA 27

imported from the East (or their ancestors had been). Syrians were
regarded as stupid, submissive and physically strong ~ ideal for certain
agricultural tasks. Although poor Sicilians became involved, their
activities were marginal and indeed contrary to the aims of the leaders of
the rebels. Moreover, we have the unimpeachable evidence of a
contemporary inscription, in which a magistrate operating in Italy and
Sicily at the end of the first revolt claims to have rounded up and
returned to their masters 917 runaway slaves of Italian owners. The
success of the slaves in Sicily would have been a magnet for those
working with herds or on the land in south Italy.'5

In Sicily we see a province in which the Romans were already well
established, and in which they and the rich Sicilians themselves had
begun to run large estates with slave-labour both for agriculture and
stock-raising. This had not eliminated traditional Greek society, but it
was contributing to the-tension between rich and poor, which had for
centuries been a feature of Greek life, and had led to social unrest among
the slaves which could spread to Italy itself.

IV. AFRICA

After the defeat of Carthage, Scipio Aemilianus annexed to Rome what
survived of Punic territory after Numidian claims had been satisfied —
the land within the so-called ‘royal’ or ‘Phoenician’ trenches — while
formally assigning the remaining territory to the children of king
Massinissa, i.e. king Micipsa, his brothers and descendants. A ten-man
commission established by a Lex Livia then arrived, and with their aid
Scipio punished Rome’s enemies and rewarded her friends. Carthage and
other Punic cities which had remained loyal to her were destroyed, and
the site of Carthage was formally consecrated; cities which had defected
to Rome were granted their liberty, among them Utica, which also
received additions to its territory stretching from modern Bizerta to near
Carthage itself and became the residence of the Roman governor. The
commission imposed tribute on all men and women who remained
within Rome’s new province, outside the free cities.!6 The Carthagi-
nians, who did not flee across the border into Numidia, as some clearly
did, or become members of the free cities, were apparently expected to
live in villages or on individual farms.

French aerial surveys have shown that there is a gigantic system of
centuriation (the characteristic orthogonal Roman land-division) with
one axis running roughly north-west to south-east from near Bizerta to

'S ILLRP 434. For the theory of nationalist revolts Verbrugghe 1972 (E 30) and 1974 (E 31).
‘6 Pliny HN v.25; App. Pun. 54.235-6; 135.639-41; Eumachos of Naples, FGrH 178 F 2; lex
agraria (Bruns no. 11), lines 79, 81.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

28 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

near Sidi-bou-Ali, which would have been entirely within the royal
trenches. This is differently oriented to another which begins just south
of it and includes land first annexed in 46 B.c. The former grid is
therefore of Republican date and must have been the basis of the land-
distribution carried out under the Lex Rubria devised by C. Gracchus
and in subsequent years. It is, however, a vast scheme, whose main axis 1s
almost 160 km. long, and the possibility should be considered that it may
in part even antedate the Lex Rubria and show that the Romans assigned
land to citizens or allies in this area immediately after 146, either through
sale or lease by the censors, as is attested later in the Lex agraria of 111.!7
In 125 a plague of locusts caused devastation and depopulation in Africa.
Two years later C. Gracchus, perhaps seeing in this disaster the
opportunity for a new settlement policy, proposed through the Lex
Rubria the foundation of a colony on the site of Carthage with land-
assignations in the hinterland. Six thousand men were eventually
enrolled, probably more than the law envisaged. The maximum allot-
ment was 200 iugera (about 50 hectares), that is, a complete Roman
centuria. Various portents were announced and alleged to show that the
refoundation of Carthage was unlucky. As a result, the Lex Rubria was
repealed in 121 after street-fighting and the deaths of C. Gracchus and
Fulvius Flaccus. Nevertheless, a land-commission continued to operate
there, allotting land to the former colonists, resettling those who had
been improperly deprived of land and supervising the execution of the
sales of land carried out at Rome and the leases of the censors. How many
emigrants, as opposed to absentee landlords, actually received land in
Africa, we cannot tell. We know nothing of any urbanization or even the
creation of fora as meeting-places in this period: probably many
immigrants resided in the free cities. Nevertheless, from then onwards
the Roman presence in Africa was much more than the small Roman
administration. !8

There were also Romans and Italians in the neighbouring kingdom of
Numidia. Micipsa, who had succeeded Massinissa in 148 B.c., developed
a new capital at Cirta (usually identified with Constantine), at which
Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans and Italians congregated, leaving
Thugga to be the city of Massinissa’s temple. An additional reason for
the kingdom’s prosperity was the exploitation of the land in the
Bagradas valley and the area of Mactar, taken from Carthage by Roman
arbitration in the years preceding her final struggle (Micipsa was able to
send grain to C. Gracchus when he was quaestor in Sardinia in 125-124
in spite of the locust-plague). On Micipsa’s death, however, ¢. 118 a crisis
arose which was to become the subject of one of Sallust’s historical

17 Lex agraria, 7off, 82-3, 85-9; Chevallier 1958 (E 3); Piganiol 1954 (E 22) Tab.I.
'8 Oros. v.11.2~5; App. BCi. 1.24.102—-4; Pun. 136.644—5; lex agraria 5 2ff, esp. 60-1; ILLRP 4735.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

AFRICA 29

monographs. Micipsa was survived by two sons of his own, Adherbal
and Hiempsal, and an older adopted son fathered by his dead brother
Mastarnabal, Jugurtha. Mastarnabal, like Micipsa, had been reputed for
his Greek culture (he had won a chariot-victory at the Panathenaia); his
son was handsome, athletic and personable and had gained a good name
for himself when leading a contingent of Numidian cavalry, which
Micipsa had supplied to help Scipio Aemilianus at Numantia.!9 The
princes found it impossible to co-operate: Jugurtha had Hiempsal
murdered and drove Adherbal out of the kingdom. Adherbal appealed
to the Senate, declaring, according to Sallust, that he ruled his kingdom
metely as a bailiff for the Romans. In 116 a senatorial commission of ten
divided Numidia, assigning the western sector, adjoining Mauretania, to
Jugurtha and the more civilized sector, including the ex-Punic territory,
to Adherbal. Jugurtha exploited this division to mount a new war
against Adherbal, eventually defeating him and shutting him up in his
capital in 112. Adherbal sent successive appeals to Rome for help. An
embassy of three young men was not permitted by Jugurtha to interview
him; an embassy of three senior senators summoned Jugurtha to Utica
but had no more success in stopping the siege. Finally, Adherbal
surrendered on the recommendation of the Italians who were helping to
defend him, but both he and they were killed by Jugurtha.

These developments led to a popular outcry and the Senate resorted to
war in 111 in order to enforce Jugurtha’s submission to Roman power.
(Jugurtha may have anticipated that this attack would come anyhow and
so his actions may not have seemed to him foolishly provocative.) After
some fighting, Jugurtha came to terms with the consul Bestia: he
formally surrendered himself and his kingdom to Rome, but was
allowed to retain his crown at the cost of a small indemnity. Suspected of
having bribed the consul and his officers, he was brought to Rome under
safe conduct to testify, but this was thwarted by a tribune’s veto. He then
contrived the murder of Massiva, son of Micipsa’s brother Gulussa,
whom the Senate were considering as a rival claimant to the Numidian
throne. So all dealings with him were abandoned and he was allowed to
return to Africa, but the Senate accepted the necessity of a military
solution. Meanwhile, Jugurtha’s methods and the collusion of a number
of senators with him created a political crisis at Rome (ch. 3. pp. 88ff).

Sp. Albinus, the consul who resumed the war in 110, failed to get to
grips with his enemy, while his brother, whom he left in charge as a
legate in the succeeding winter, was trapped by Jugurtha after an assault
on his camp and was forced to make a treaty. This treaty was disowned
by the Senate — a procedure now familiar from Spanish precedents. In

19 Strab. xvi1.3.13 (832); Diod. xxx1v/v.35.1; Plut. C. Gracch. 2.3; Sall. Jug. 6, 7, 21, 26; Livy
Per...

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

30 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

109 the war was continued with increased vigour under Q. Metellus after
new recruitment and intensified military training. These were also the
main features of C. Marius’ programme, when he obtained from the
people the command in 107. While the Romans soon came to control
eastern Numidia — the area immediately west and south of the province,
they found it difficult in country ideal for cavalry to reduce a highly
mobile enemy, who preferred ambushes and harassment to pitched
battles. Marius managed to destroy a number of Numidian strongholds
in operations extending to near the Mauretanian border, but his
problems were compounded when Jugurtha forged an alliance with
Bocchus, king of Mauretania, at the price, according to Sallust, of a third
of Numidia (this allowed Bocchus to fight for the territory as his own).
The war was ended by diplomacy, especially that of L. Sulla, who in 105
persuaded Bocchus to renew his old friendship with Rome and betray
Jugurtha. The Romans made no territorial acquisitions: Bocchus was
confirmed in his kingdom and Jugurtha’s brother, Gauda, was granted
Numidia, bolstered by Marius through the settlement of Gaetulian
cavalry from his army in the Bagradas valley. (This is the best explana-
tion of the fact that Uchi Maius and Thuburnica later recorded Marius as
their founder; the province was not extended along the valley as the later
presence of Hiarbas at Bulla Regia shows.)?0 Roman veterans were
settled in the surveyed portion of the province itself and on the island of
Kerkenna after a law of Saturninus in 103.7!

The Romans had been reluctant to embroil themselves in a Numidian
War but in the end they would settle for nothing short of Jugurtha’s
unconditional surrender and death, because they did not trust him to
conform with Roman policy. Sallust ascribed the apparent feebleness
and indecision in Roman behaviour down to r1o to the corruption of
leading senators by Jugurtha’s bribes. Modern scholars have argued that
on the contrary the Romans were following a rational policy: a war in
Numidia was difficult and expensive; Roman interests were best served
by a strong ruler friendly to Rome and any closer involvement in
Numidian affairs was counter-productive; thus it was largely popular
agitation, swelled by the complaints of businessmen like those pre-
viously killed at Cirta, which led Rome into an unnecessary conflict.
Although there is no reason to question the fact that Jugurtha used
bribery, one cannot necessarily infer from the bribe-taking that the
senators’ political judgement was wrong. The Romans had no forces of
their own originally stationed in Africa (indeed the protection of the
province depended on Numidian military support); they had little

20 Brunt 1971 (a 16) $77-80; cf. Gascou 1969 (B 157) 555~68. Old view Quoniam 196g (B 222);

Broughton 1929 (E 2) 19, 32. 21 De Vir. Il. 73.1; Inser. Ital. x111.3 no. 7.
22 De Sanctis 1932 (A 104) 187ff; Syme 1964 (B 116) 174ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MACEDONIA AND GREECE 31

knowledge of the remoter parts of the kingdom; their forces were ill-
suited to the type of campaigning required. However, the kingdom was
a dependency from which they expected obedience, and Jugurtha had
humiliated Roman diplomacy more seriously than Attalus and Prusias
had done in Asia Minor nearly forty years before. Above all, Roman and
Italian lives and property were at stake, not merely in Cirta but in the
province itself where thousands of settlers had recently acquired land.
The provisions of the /ex agraria of 111 to consolidate land-assignments
in Africa into a permanent pattern coincide with the beginning of
military operations against Jugurtha. Money from rents and purchases
was due to the treasury; credit depended on confidence that the western
frontier of the province was secure. There were clearly Romans in Africa
eager to draw profits from Numidia: apart from the businessmen
massacred at Cirta, we may suspect the knights in the Roman army, who
were friends of Marius, of having this object in view. However, new
economic exploitation was not the motive of the Roman government:
the war was rather the assertion of authority and the protection of
investment.

V. MACEDONIA AND GREECE

After half a century of trying to control at arm’s length events on the far
side of the Adriatic, the Romans began to maintain there permanently a
magistrate and troops. The story of the defeat of Andriscus and the
Achaean League has been told elsewhere (Vol. virr?, pp. 319-23). Its
sequel was the establishment of a new province in Macedonia in 148/7
and the addition to it of a considerable part of Greece in 146/35.
Macedonia had already been made subject to tribute in 167, when it was
organized as four independent republics. These regions (merides) were
still the basis of Roman administration under the Principate, while the
cities themselves were supervised now, as under the Macedonian kings,
by boards of politarchai.> The border of Macedonia was extended to the
river Hebrus, and this became the terminus of the Via Egnatia, which ran
from two starting-points on the Adriatic, Apollonia and Dyrrachium,
across the mountains to Pella and Thessalonica and then eastwards
towards the Hellespont. Its construction, no doubt following the track
of earlier royal routes, was undertaken sufficiently early in the province’s
history to be known to Polybius and a milestone of a Cn. Egnatius C. f.
has been recently found near Thessalonica (conclusively disproving the
odd theories about the origin of the name of the road to be found in
standard reference works).?4

23 Livy xiv.18.6—-7; 29.5-10; 30.1; Acts 16:12; Cormack 1977 (B 143); Koukouli-Chrysanthaki

1981 (B 180).
24 Polyb. xxxiv.12.2a-8; Strab. v1.7.4 (322-3); fr. 48; AE (1973) no. 492; Walbank 1985 (B 254).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

32 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

One revolt by a pseudo-Philip was suppressed by a quaestor ¢. 140.
Much of the efforts of the governors was devoted to fighting the
Thracians to the north and east of the province and extending Roman
influence in these areas. M. Cosconius fought a war ¢. 135 and received an
embassy from the city of Cyzicus in Asia requesting protection. Q.
Pompeius was killed fighting Gauls, probably Scordisci, in 119, but his
quaestor T. Annius successfully protected the province against invasion.
C. Cato was defeated in 114, but this was compensated by the victories of
M. Livius Drusus (cos. 112) and M. Minucius Rufus (cos. 110). Then in
102-101 T. Didius won further victories against the Thracians, and the
Cnidus fragments of the Roman law about the provinces show thata new
territory, the Caenic Chersonese, east of the Hebrus had been formally
annexed to the province.?5 This shows the tendency of Roman power
here to expand towards the Hellespont, like that of the former Macedo-
nian kings.

The Achaean League had revolted in 147 in reaction to Roman
instructions that Sparta, Corinth, Argos and Orchomenus should be
separated from it. Sympathy and support had come from Thebes and
Chalcis. The settlement imposed by L. Mummius after the rebellion had
been crushed was in part a reprisal, in part an effort to ensure that there
should be no further uprisings. Cicero states that Mummius destroyed
Corinth and subjected many cities of Achaea and Boeotia to the zmperium
Romanum. According to Pausanias, Boeotia had to pay an indemnity to
Heraclea and Euboea, as did the Achaeans to Sparta. Moreover, the
league councils of the Achaeans, Boeotians and Phocians were dissolved,
tribute was demanded and oligarchic governments imposed.”6 Greece
did not havea governor of its own until the Principate, but it is clear that
in the late Republic regions of Greece were administered and taxed by
the Romans. A fragment of an inscription with a proconsul’s letter
addressed to the Guild of Dionysiac Artists refers to a province and
another area ‘which they rule’. These are plausibly restored as Macedo-
nia and Greece respectively.2”7 On a newly discovered stone there are
instructions by L. Mummius and Q. Fabius Maximus relating to the
Dionysiac Artists in Macedonia, Boeotia and the Peloponnese.

The territory of Corinth became Roman ager publicus and was being
surveyed with a view to sale or settlement at the time of the Lex agraria of
111. The same thing is probably true of the land of Chalcis and Thebes,
cities also destroyed by Mummius. A senatus consultum of 78 B.C.
rewarding Greek sea-captains refers to the leasing by the censors of
Euboea and here in 85 Sulla gave 10,000 éugera as a reward to the

28 MRR, years 143, 135, 119, 112, 110, 101; Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170) 204.

26 Paus. vi1.16.9~10; Cic. 1 Verr. 1.55; Accame 1946 (p 250) 16ff.
27 Sherk 1984 (B 239) 44, cf. Dittenberger, SIG 683, lines 64-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ASIA 33

Mithridatic general, Archelaus. Oropus too seems to have been leased by
the censors before Sulla’s time. Epigraphic evidence also confirms the
installation of oligarchies. In the documents of Peloponnesian cities
under the new order we no longer have references to the council (bou/e)
and popular assembly (demos) but to the magistrates and sunedroi. In one
city, Dyme in Achaea, there was a rising against the newly appointed
oligarchic government during the governorship of Fabius Maximus.
The rebels had burnt the town hall with its records and proposed laws ‘in
defiance of the constitution given by Rome to the Achaeans’ — perhaps
including the cancellation of debts.?8

After a short while the Romans abolished the indemnities and restored
both the councils of the leagues and the rights of Greeks to hold land in
other cities. This is perhaps attested in the epigraph of an honorific statue
at Olympia set up to their commander by Achaean cavalrymen who had
served under a Domitius Ahenobarbus (probably in the conquest of
southern Gaul). Civic administration continued both in the regions
annexed by Rome and the cities like Athens and those of the Thessalian
League which were free from Roman burdens. However, intervention
by the Roman governor occurred in matters affecting the free as well as
the subject cities, for example in the long-running dispute over the
privileges of branches of the Guild of Dionysiac Artists. The mixture of
dependence and independence is well illustrated by the way that Attic
tetradrachms and Macedonian tetradrachms adapted by the Romans
from a type used by Philip V and Perseus became standard coinages.?9

VI. ASIA

In 146 between Greece and the Parthian empire centred on Iran there lay
kings, cities and peoples, who were to a great extent nominally friends
and allies of the Roman people, without necessarily being friends of each
other. In 133 the situation changed sharply, when Attalus II of
Pergamum died while still comparatively young and without an obvious
natural successor and his will in favour of the Roman people came into
force. The Pergamene side to the story has been told already (Vol. vir,
Pp- 373-80); its implications for Roman domestic politics will be tackled
in the next chapter (pp. 68, 79). Our present concern is its contribu-
tion to Roman empire-building. It is first important to notice that
Tiberius Gracchus’ proposal about the cities and the revenues of the
kingdom implies an expectation that the windfall would be accepted (if it
had not been accepted already). Through the will the royal lands became

28 Lex agraria 96-7; Cic. Leg. Agr. 1.5; S.C. de Asclepiade (Bruns no. 41) 6, 23; Plut. Sulla 23.4-5;
STG 683, 15; 735-6, passim; Sherk 1984 (B 239) 43 (now probably to be dated to 145 B.C.).
29 SEG 15 (1958) no. 254; Sherk 1984 (B 239); SIG 704-5; 729; Crawford 1985 (B 145) 115ff, 1524.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

34 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

the public property of the Roman people, while the cities were made
autonomous, freed from tribute and indeed assigned territory for
revenue. A decree of Pergamum, passed before the ratification of the will
was known, shows the city distributing its citizenship rapidly to soldiers,
subject peoples and foreigners in the town and its associated territory, in
order to forestall any protest that this provision in the will was being
ignored. It seems unlikely that at the time the Pergamenes knew that
Gracchus planned to legislate about the cities. In the event in spite of
Gracchus’ murder the will was adopted and there was a nationalist
reaction under Aristonicus, a bastard son of Eumenes II.%0

Aristonicus received support from some cities, who presumably had
not profited sufficiently from the will, and from slaves, for whom he is
said to have created a new city or citizenship as members of the City of
the Sun (Vol. virr, p. 379). He was resisted by the forces of neighbour-
ing kings, including Nicomedes II of Bithynia and Mithridates V of
Pontus, and the remaining cities. A Roman commission of five, sent out
to settle the kingdom, was replaced by consular commanders with
armies. P. Crassus (cos. 131) was defeated and died. His successor, M.
Perperna, was victorious and captured Aristonicus, but he too died and
the settlement of Asia fell to M’. Aquillius (cos. 129) and a senatorial
commission of ten. It was a slow process, involving the reduction of a
number of rebellious cities and strongholds (an inscription shows
fighting in Mysia Abbaitis and probably in Caria) and the building of
roads. Aquillius eventually triumphed at Rome in November 126,
having become the recipient of a religious cult with a priesthood at
Pergamum.”!

The nature of his settlement is not so clear, nor was it immediately
ratified, since it was still the subject of debate and legislation about the
time of C. Gracchus’ tribunates (124-122). Much of Greater Phrygia was
originally conceded to Mithridates V of Pontus; Nicomedes II of
Bithynia also hoped for concessions. The Lycian League remained
autonomous allies of Rome, as did many cities in Caria and in the
Pergamene kingdom proper, e.g. Pergamum, Ephesus, Laodicea-on-
Lycus, Aphrodisias. Over the revenues extracted from the province
there is unsolved controversy. On the one hand it is certain that Rome
drew rents from the leases of the public (once royal) land, leases which
may have in part been taken up by Roman citizens. For the rest it is
alleged in a speech attributed by Appian to M. Antonius in 42-41 B.C.

30 Strab. xiv.1.38 (646-8); Plut. Ti. Gracch. 14.1~2; OGIS 3 38; other sources in Greenidge—Clay 1 1—
12, 17-18; Robinson 1954 (B 234); Vogt 1974 (A 123) 93-102.

31 IGRR 1.292; ILLRP 45 5-6; Holleaux 1938 (B 174), cf. Bull.ep. (1963) no 220; (1984) 349-52,
384; Dakaris 1987 (B 147) 16-17 — dedication by three Cassopeans who served in war-chariots under
Perperna. J. and L. Robert, Claros 1, Les décrets hellénistiques (Paris, 1989).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ASIA 35

that the Romans had rescinded the taxes which they paid to Attalus, until
demagogues arose at Rome and with them the need for tribute. This is
apparently confirmed by the fragment of the speech of C. Gracchus
against the Lex Aufeia, a law which seems to have been enacting
Aquillius’ settlement, since in this speech Gracchus claims to be
increasing Rome’s revenues and defending the welfare of the Roman
people. Against this, an inscription partially preserving a senatus consul-
tum relating to disputes in Pergamene territory refers to the farming out
of the revenues of Asia and to the decision of a magistrate about land ina
dispute probably involving tax-collectors (pablicani). A consul, M’.
Aquillius, is mentioned in the decree. If he is the consul of 129, then we
have evidence for the collection of revenues near Pergamum before C.
Gracchus, but, if he is the consul of 101, the argument collapses. It is
likely in view of their general practice that from 129 the Romans at least
drew revenues from transit-dues (portoria) in Asia and imposed an
indemnity or tribute on the cities that had sided with Aristonicus, in
addition to the rents on public land.32 Then C. Gracchus enacted that the
collection of direct and indirect taxes in Asia should be farmed out to
soctetates of publicani at an auction in Rome, and it seems probable to the
present writer that this formed part of a general overhaul of Asiatic
taxation in the interest of increased income. The desire to extract the
maximum profit from Asia was not, however, confined to so-called
demagogues. When Mithridates V died, the Romans reannexed Phrygia
at the expense of his son.

In the years that followed a great number of Romans and Italians
migrated into Asia, even if we discount the more exaggerated figures
given for those massacred on Mithridates VI’s orders. Not surprisingly,
there were arguments over taxation. Apart from the issue at Pergamum
(mentioned above) we have epigraphic evidence of a long-running
dispute between Priene and the Roman tax-collectors. over the exploi-
tation of salt-pans. Businessmen spread into neighbouring kingdoms.
Nicomedes III of Bithynia complained, when asked by Marius for
military aid in 104, that Romans had taken his subjects as slaves. This in
turn led to greater public involvement in politics and strategy in Asia
Minor. The Delphi-Cnidus law about the provinces of 101-100 was
concerned not only with the elimination of piracy but with the
consolidation of Roman rule in the East. The province of Asia now
extended to include Lycaonia and there is a reference too to Pamphylia.
Cilicia had been made a praetorian province, presumably as the centre of

32 IGRR 1.1692; ILLRP 174-7; Reynolds 1982 (B 226) 6ff; App. BCiv. v.4.17; ORF no. 48, fr.
44; Sherk 1984 (B 239) 12; Mattingly 1972 (B 200). An inscription from Ephesus of Nero’s reign
shows how the Romans adapted the Attalid system of taxation, especially in relation to portoria,
Engelmann and Knibbe 1989 (B 150).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

36 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

campaigning against the pirates. Meanwhile Didius’ operations in
Thrace had led to the province of Macedonia almost stretching to
Byzantium.*3 Roman physical power surrounded the Aegean and was
penetrating further into Asia Minor than at any previous time, further
than in the aftermath of the defeat of Antiochus III at Magnesia in 190.
The irony was that the submissive Seleucid and Egyptian kingdoms —
the basis of Rome’s indirect rule in the East — were at this time insecure,
while beyond the Halys and the Euphrates new challengers to the
Roman empire, Mithridates VI and the Parthians, were building up their
power.

VII. MILITARY STRENGTH AND THE EMPIRE

The foregoing survey has largely been concerned with what was from
the Roman point of view the credit side of the empire — territorial
expansion and public and private advantages that accrued from it. The
consequent problems in Rome and Italy will be the subject of the next
chapter. However, it is appropriate to consider here one particular item
on the debit side of the balance sheet, the demands made on the Roman
army.

Immediately after the Third Macedonian War the Romans did not
have to maintain as many men under arms as in the preceding period of
conquest, but this changed from 149 onwards and requirements reached
a new peak in the last decade of the century with the coincidence of the
Jugurthine War, the great invasions of the northern tribes and some
campaigning in the East. Up to her defeat at Arausio in 105 Rome needed
at least eight legions and in 101 at least twelve were probably in service,
as many as at any time since the Second Punic War. The burden fell in
theory on those with property (assidui). Those below the minimum
property qualification — the pro/etarti or capite censi — were not normally
liable for service in the legions, though they could serve in the fleet and in
an emergency (¢umultus), when the city of Rome’s own safety was at
stake, they had since the time of the war with Pyrrhus been drafted and
armed as legionaries. Some may have gone with Scipio Aemilianus to
Numantia in 134. Marius is known to have enrolled volunteers from the
capite censi, when reinforcing the African legions in 107. He would have
been doing nothing abnormal, if he had continued to recruit capite censi in
the crisis caused by the German threat in 104 onwards, and not only
volunteers but conscripts.4

Difficulty in recruiting soldiers is directly attested by resistance to
levies for the Third Macedonian War in 171 and later and for Spanish

33 [Priene, no. 111; Diod. xxxvt.3; Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170) 201-4.
34 Brunt 1971 (A 17) 394-415, 430-1; Gabba 1976 (Cc 55) 2-19.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MILITARY STRENGTH 37

Wars from 151 onwards. It is also indirectly attested by the reduction of
the minimum property qualification from the 10,000-11,000 asses —
attributed to the system of Servius Tullius, but in fact deriving from the
Second Punic War — to the 4,000 asses known to Polybius. (Rich has
raised serious doubts about whether the figure of 1,500 asses attributed to
the Servian constitution in Cicero’s De Republica can in fact be taken as
the property qualification current in 129.) Scipio Aemilianus was forced
to seek volunteers for his Numantine campaign in 134. C. Gracchus
legislated to prevent the enlistment of under-age soldiers. In 109 the
Senate felt it necessary to annul previous legislation which, it held,
damaged Rome’s war-effort by limiting conscription. It is not certain
how far the problem arose from the numerical shortage of assidui: the
problem was at least compounded by the reluctance to serve of those
available and fit to fight.35

However, the recruitment problem was not all: the record of the army
in the field was not beyond reproach. The early débacles against
Jugurtha may be put down to corruption and poor leadership. Yet there
were a series of disasters and near-disasters in the fighting on the
northern frontier — Sex. Pompeius in Macedonia in 119, C. Cato in
Thrace in 114, Cn. Carbo in Norican territory in 113, M. Silanus in the
Rhone valley in 109, L. Cassius on the west coast of Gaul in 107, Q.
Caepio and Cn. Mallius at Arausio in 105. These failures and the patchy
record of the army in Spain in the Viriathic War earlier cast doubt not
only on the quality of the generals and their troops but on the tactical
effectiveness of the Roman army. Apart from the change in recruitment,
our sources ascribe to Marius some limited changes in military practice.
The eagle became for the first time the chief legionary standard; light-
armed troops ceased to use parmulae (small round shields); the pilum (a
throwing spear) was fitted with a weak rivet, so that the shaft drooped
from the head on impact, thus hampering the man hit and preventing the
weapon from being immediately reused; soldiers were expected to carry
more of their own equipment over their shoulders on a special fork-
shaped carrier. No one mentions a major change in tactical organization.
Yet the form of the Roman army did change fundamentally between the
middle Republic, for which we have detailed evidence from Polybius
and to some extent from Livy, and the time of Caesar’s Gallic War, when
Caesar himself provided authoritative descriptions of the army’s ope-
rations. Modern scholars have tended to ascribe the decisive change to
Marius, partly on account of his reputation as an innovator and of the
challenge of the Germanic invasions, partly because what are on our

35 Livy 1.43.8; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.t7-18; Polyb. vi.19.2; Gell. NA xvi.10.10; Cic. Rep.
11.40; Plut. C. Gracch. 5; Asc. 68c; Rich 1983 (c 121); Hopkins 1978 (a 53) 35ff for calculations of the
proportion of young adults that were required for conscription.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

38 2. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

evidence the last traces of the old system can be found in Sallust’s
Jagurtha*6

The legion known to Polybius was already a complex military
machine, as sophisticated as the Hellenistic formations it defeated, and
far removed from the majority of the hoplite phalanxes of the classical
Greek world. It was subdivided into three ranks, which each contained
ten maniples; a maniple had two centurions and 100-200 men, depend-
ing on the rank to which it belonged. The first two ranks, the hastati and
principes, were equipped with body-armour and one-metre-high convex
shields (scuta), throwing-spears (pé/a) and Spanish swords (g/adii). The
third rank of ¢riarii, the heavy infantry, who were only half in number of
each of the first two ranks, had the heavy thrusting-spear (hasta) in place
of the pi/um but were otherwise equipped in the same way. Each rank had
400 light-armed troops (ve/ites) assigned to it, who had no body-armour
but a helmet and carried a sword, javelins and a light shield. The
youngest recruits were made velites; then the ranks of hastati, principes and
triarii were filled in ascending order of age. The most experienced, the
triarii, were understood to be the last line of defence. At the beginning of
the levy 300 cavalry were recruited from Roman citizens to be associated
with each legion. There was thus variation in equipment between and
even within ranks, and considerable flexibility and mobility, which
appeared to best advantage in hilly country and over rough ground.
Furthermore the small divisions of the army made it well suited for
attacks over a small front or flank-attacks. In these respects Polybius
judged the legion superior to the Macedonian phalanx, which was
invincible in the right position on suitable terrain but cumbersome and
vulnerable from the flank and rear.37

By Caesar’s time the system of separate ranks differentiated by age and
arms had disappeared, though the names (e.g. hastatus) were still used to
distinguish centurions. Romans were no longer recruited as light-armed
troops into legions: this function was performed by allied auxiliaries
organized in separate units. Similarly Roman cavalry had been entirely
replaced by the allied cavalry, mainly from Gaul, Spain or Numidia,
which Rome had been using since the Second Punic War. Within the
legion itself the tactical unit was the cohort of about 400-500 men, which
was also used independently in minor operations. It is easy to understand
why the Romans substituted more effective allied cavalry and light
infantry for their own, especially if they were short of manpower. The
changes in the heavy infantry are a greater problem. In fact we find
cohorts attested in Polybius’ and Livy’s accounts of Spanish campaigns
before 190 and such units were used, according to Frontinus, in Spain

36 Kromayer and Veith 1928 (A 59) 299ff, 376ff; Marquadt and Wissowa 1881-5 (A 69) 11.43 2ff.
37 Polyb. vi.19ff; xviit.27-32; Livy virr.18.3; Rawson 1971 (B 93) 13-31.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MILITARY STRENGTH 39

later in the second century. Yet camps outside Numantia were still
organized in manipular sections. The last positive evidence for the
hastati, principes and triarii functioning as separate ranks is in Sallust’s
account of Metellus’ battle against Jugurtha at the river Muthul, but
shortly after this passage we find both Metellus and Marius using cohorts
as their tactical unit. Ve/ites still appear in this war and indeed are said by
Frontinus to have been used by Sulla at Orchomenus in 86.38

It has been argued that the evidence suggests a more gradual
introduction of the cohort, and that this can be explained in part by the
requirements of campaigning in Spain, where a number of self-sufficient
detachments were required, in part by the need to have a more solid basic
unit in pitched battles when confronting the concentrated charges of
Celts or Iberians; the process was then completed by Marius in order to
create a suitable defence against the Cimbri. This is more convincing
than simply to explain the change as a sudden response to the German
threat, but perhaps is itself not quite sufficient. In one sense the
formation of the legion becomes less complex and sophisticated. The
challenge of the great Hellenistic armies was absent after Pydna.
Meanwhile the army suffered a shortage of recruits and, more important
— to judge from Marius’ efforts in 107 —a shortage of experienced men re-
enlisting. Instead men formerly capite censi were pressed into legionary
service. The grading of ranks by age would in these circumstances have
become inappropriate and the specialization of the ¢riarii in the use of the
hasta a luxury. The soldiers may well have become man for man poorer
soldiers through lack of battle experience and this in turn may have made
the maniple too small to be secure asa unit. Marius still deserves credit as
a reformer, but as one who brought to a close a period of evolution,
which was as much a decline in Roman fighting-power as a response to
new challenges. Faced with an army which was becoming less differen-
tiated, skilled and disciplined, Marius made a virtue of uniformity by
training every legionary properly in one repertoire of skills.

38 Sall. Jug. 46.7; 49-6; 54.33 55.43 §6.4; 100.4; 105.2; Frontin. Sfr. 1.3.17; Keppie 1984 (A 57) 46-
50, 63ff; Bell 1965 (c 22); Schulten 1927 (B 316) 111.1 34ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 3

POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 3.c.

ANDREW LINTOTT

Roman morality and political harmony were at their height, wrote
Sallust, between the Second and Third Punic Wars. After this came the
evils that accompany prosperity — strife, greed, ambition and the pursuit
of ascendancy by powerful men.! The inadequacies of this kind of
explanation and of the precise dividing line drawn here by Sallust were
discussed in chapter 1 (pp. 7-9). In spite of this there is no doubt that
the razing of Carthage introduced an era of political crisis, whose
antagonisms recalled the dimly remembered struggles of the early
Republic and brought into question the stability of the constitution
which Polybius admired.

Polybius thought that the common people were wronged through the
greed of some men and given a false sense of importance through the
ambitions of others. These exploited the truculence and recklessness of
the poor in order to dominate the constitution and created what was in
name democracy but was in fact mob-rule. Modern scholars are in
general reluctant to recognize so dramatic a change, at least in Polybius’
lifetime. The present writer has argued in an earlier book that the
violence of the late Republic should not be regarded as the result of a
sudden reversal of Roman values but the re-emergence of long-standing
attitudes and conflicts, which had been temporarily suppressed by
political prudence and the profits from success abroad. On the other
hand, it is not excessively superficial to look to the personalities of men
like the Gracchi and see in their imagination and resolve the initial
moment ofa new political process. However, this can only be done when
we have discerned how much of the late Republic was already present in
that middle period renowned in Sallust’s eyes for its moderation.

I. THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION IN THE SECOND CENTURY B.C.

Aristotle would have treated the Roman constitution either as a mixture

of the basic forms of constitution (monarchy, oligarchy and democracy),

as Polybius did later, or else as one of the more moderate forms of’
\ Sall. He rai.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 41

democracy, close to the ill-defined border he drew between this and
moderate oligarchy. The Roman body politic was not completely in the
power of either rich or poor; all citizens to some extent participated in
politics, but the law was sovereign, and the few offices were only
available to those with a property qualification. The social basis of the
constitution was in theory a class of farmers, rather than the manual
workers and tradesmen in the city.?

In its early years the Republic was a broad oligarchy, whose hereditary
aristocracy sought to justify its dominance of office and policy by
appealing to assemblies of men who formed its supreme military arm —
the heavily armed soldiers of the ¢/assis, that is, the Roman equivalent of
the hoplite phalanx. The struggle of the plebeians with the patricians led
not only to a change of balance in the relationships of the primitive
constitution, but introduced a new element which, in spite of clever
grafting, was never fully reconciled with the ethos of the dominant class.
The aristocracy was opened to outsiders; the importance of the assemb-
lies as the source of authority and of rewards and penalties was more
strongly asserted; indeed the written laws passed by assemblies came to
supersede aristocratic traditions even in such reserved fields as religion.
All this lay within the framework of the original constitution. However,
the poor also acquired their own spokesmen and magistrates (the
tribunes and aediles of the plebs) and their own assembly (the concilium
plebis). Moreover, through collective physical action and the guarantees
of support that they gave to their tribunes, they achieved protection
against arbitrary treatment by magistrates. This protection against
summary physical punishment through execution and flogging, called
provocatio, became enshrined in law (the first law was probably of 300
B.C.). Similarly, the existence and functions of the tribunes themselves
became accepted as a constitutional fact from the time of the Twelve
Tables onwards. This process culminated in the Lex Hortensia of 287
B.C., by which p/ebiscita were given the force of laws without further
ratification. The tribunes thus achieved the right to legislate and
prosecute in their own assemblies, and their physical inviolability
(sacrosanctity), which the plebs had originally sworn to uphold, allowed
them not only to defend the persons of individual citizens (auxilium) but
to impede actions by other magistrates (é#tercessio) and so veto their
taking effect.3

Such was the process of natural growth, which produced Rome’s
mixed constitution. This constitution, however, in Polybius’ view, was
still dominated at the time of the Second Punic War by its aristocratic
element, the Senate ~ by contrast with Carthage, which had already
passed its zenith and allowed the common people too much influence in

2 Arist. Pol, 1291b-1293b; 1266a; 1279b. > Bleicken 1955 (F 24); Lintott 1972 (F 102).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

Tyrrhenian

Sea

2 Italy and Sicily
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 43

deliberation.‘ In fact, not only the oligarchic element in the Senate, but
the monarchic element in the magistracies played an enormous part.
Rome’s executive in the second century B.c. was to be found in eight
annually elected senior magistrates (two consuls, six praetors) supported
by those ex-consuls and ex-praetors whose annual term had been
prolonged in service abroad. Among junior officials, the aediles looked
after the fabric of Rome itself and the administration of life there.
Quaestors were assistants to senior magistrates or in some cases had
independent, mainly financial, functions. There were also elected boards
to administer the mint, city police-work and from time to time the
distribution of land. The censors every five years reviewed the size and
class-structure of the citizen body and regulated certain aspects of state
income and expenditure.

The senior magistrates were granted immense discretion in the
fighting of wars and the government of subject peoples, limited only by
the possibility of prosecution once they left office — a real threat, but one
which could be frustrated, as is shown by Servius Galba’s escape from
charges of brutality in 149 and the acquittals between 138 and 123 in the
first four cases known to us de repetundis (concerning the recovery of
money illegally extracted from allies).5 The authority exercised by
Roman magistrates abroad is exemplified by the fact that it was Scipio
Aemilianus himself as proconsul, who after the defeat of Carthage in 146
drew the line which was to separate Roman territory from that assigned
to the descendants of Massinissa (p. 27). Although senior magistrates did
not have such arbitrary powers in the domestic field on account of the
potential opposition of tribunes, the legal framework of political activity
and the tradition of consulting the advice of the Senate, it required the
initiative of a senior magistrate or a tribune to set in motion legislation or
a policy in administration. The Senate could not meet without being
convened by a consul, praetor or tribune, nor could the formal and
informal meetings of the people required for legislation.

Voting in assemblies decided who should hold office and what laws
should bind the populus Romanus, but this democratic sovereignty was so
heavily nuanced in practice that historians have tended to react excessi-
vely and completely underrate the popular element in the constitution.
The organization of the military assembly (comitia centuriata), which
elected consuls and praetors, has been described in Vol. vi112, pp. 198—
204, 337-8, 440-3). In its revised form, dating from the late third
century, the knights (eqaifes) and the wealthiest of the five other classes
had a disproportionate influence, to the extent that in a closely contested
consular election with three front-running candidates for two places the
result would probably have been decided early in the returns of the third

4 Polyb. vi.g.10-12; 10.12-14; §1.3-8. 5 Lintott, 1981 (F 104) 166-7, 173-5, 209.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

44 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

class, the fourth and fifth being effectively disfranchised. The divisions
within the classes by tribes (the regional voting-districts used to form the
centuries whose decisions were the component blocks in the election)
favoured those with a country domicile against those from the city of
Rome itself. There were thirty-one rural tribes to four urban. (The votes
of freedmen were confined by 146 B.c. to the urban tribes, though this
restriction had been removed for a period in the early second century.)
However, this imbalance was modified to some extent by the fact that
seventeen of the rural tribes had territory within a day’s journey from
Rome. Moreover, migration to Rome would have already entailed that
many of those living there were registered in a rural tribe. The tribal
assemblies — the comitia tributa and the concilinm plebis— voted simply with
the thirty-five tribes as their component blocks. Thus in these assemb-
lies, where the greater part of legislation took place, there was no clear
bias towards the wealthy.®

Nevertheless, assemblies might be unrepresentative for a more
circumstantial reason — the scanty attendance of men from distant
voting-districts, perhaps two-thirds of the total Roman citizen body at
the time. Attendance from such areas was expected and indeed organized
by politicians, in whose interest it was, for major and predictable events,
like the consular elections, or an important bill. For instance, C. Marius
solicited support from the country areas as well as the town before his
election in 108. Votes on legislation occurring at irregular intervals
during the year, however, could not be expected to command consistent
support, especially as they might clash with local preoccupations. Ti.
Gracchus got countrymen to come and vote for his agrarian bill, but was
unable to mobilize them again to vote for his re-election to the tribunate,
because it was harvest-time.’ Politicians canvassed before elections —
traditionally over three market-days (nundinae). Similarly they presented
bills to informal gatherings (contiones) before formal legislation in a duly
convened assembly (in 98 it was laid down that the publication of a bill
must extend over at least three market-days prior to legislation).
However, contiones were not occasions for general debate. They must
have resembled rather a public meeting held by a candidate for election
in contemporary democratic countries. Citizens who were not magis-
trates had a right to speak, but no doubt these were members of the
governing class. The audience would have been usually small (contiones
often met in the Comitium — a small open-air auditorium outside the
senate-house) and there were on occasion competing contiones in the
Forum.

Nevertheless, in the second century B.c. the assemblies decided not
only on alterations in public and private law but on major policies over a

6 Taylor 1960 (F 156); 1966 (F 157). 7 Sall. Iug. 73.6; App. BCiv. 1.14.58-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 45

wide range of issues. Such issues were citizenship, colonization and
public land, finance (including taxation, coinage and interest-rates),
religion, social matters, for example the restraint of conspicuous luxury
in sumptuary laws, and in foreign policy the making of war, peace and
treaties. Assemblies were also used to conduct political prosecutions,
especially by tribunes and aediles, though the procedure was cumber-
some and in capital cases according to a law of the Twelve Tables the
final vote had to be held in the comitia centuriata. However, the populus
Romanus did not on the whole concern itself with the details of
administration, especially of war and foreign policy, and in this it
differed widely from the assembly of classical Athens.

As we have noticed in chapter 1, scholars since Mommsen have been
inclined to treat the assemblies as institutions manipulated by the
aristocracy or at least by individual aristocrats. Of course, even the
Athenian assembly fell under the sway of its leading politicians, and once
it is granted that a Roman assembly had a choice between following a
Fabius and following a Cornelius Scipio or between a Scipio and the rest
of the aristocracy, then it has a genuine power of decision. There was,
however, one particular way in which a Roman voter was subject to
pressure from the aristocracy until the beginning of this historical
period. The Lex Gabinia of 139 introduced for the first time secret ballot
into elections; there followed a series of laws extending this right — the
Lex Cassia of 137 about non-capital prosecutions, the Lex Papiria of 131
about legislation and the Lex Coelia of 107 about capital prosecutions. A
notorious passage of Cicero argues that previously open voting had
allowed the authority of the ‘best men’ to have its greatest effect. The
presiding magistrate and his polling officers (rogatores) would have been
especially well placed to exploit this, but pressure and intimidation from
other quarters was possible and in fact continued after the introduction
of secret voting.®

In the middle Republic the fasti show many instances of the succession
of one member of a family by another in the consulship, for example the
Postumii and Popillii Laenates in the years 174-172, and there are texts
attesting the importance of the presidency of electoral assemblies. Yet
the presiding magistrate did not always have his way, or else he had to
resort to extreme measures for success. Appius Claudius (cos. 185) was
alleged to have used force to get his brother elected for 184. By contrast,
the pursuit of popular favour (ambitio) by new men led to the creation of
a special judicial process for electoral bribery (ambitus) and made the
results of elections less predictable.? The whole issue of patron—client

8 Cic. Leg. 111.34; Lintott 1968 (a 62) 69-73.
9 Livy xxx1x.32.10-14; cf. XXXV.10.9; XXXVIII.3.§; XL.17.8; XL.19; Per, xLvu; Plaut. Ampb. 62ff;
Poen. 36ff, Rilinger 1976 (F 131).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

46 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

relationships, which have been thought to have determined the voting of
the lower classes, will be considered below in the context of the working
of the aristocracy. Here it is sufficient to remark that the influence of
presiding magistrates and the growth of ambitus both contradict the
notion that the votes of humble men were securely tied to the wishes of
existing patrons. More generally, though popular feeling frequently
expressed itself in the support of one prominent aristocratic politician or
another, there’ was an autonomy in this, which went beyond the
machinations of the politicians themselves. Scipio Aemilianus received
his first consulship in 147, before the normal time, through popular
demand. Those who supported Ti. Gracchus in 133 did so largely
because they favoured his measures. Similarly, the humble men, who
voted for ballot laws like the Lex Gabinia or earlier for Cato’s /ex de
provocatione, would have done so for the most part not through personal
connexions with the legislators and their backers but because the
measure itself secured their allegiance. It is significant that the Leges
Porciae and the Lex Cassia were both celebrated by coins bearing the
type of Libertas. !0

The extent of popular influence on politics in Rome must also be
judged by reference to the power of the aristocracy, in particular the
workings of the Senate. After the regular admission of plebeians to
curule magistracies and the Senate in the fourth century B.c., access to
high office was limited de facto, if not de iure, by a property qualification.
Only those whose families came from the senatorial order, the equestrian
order or perhaps the obscure order of tribuni aerarii (who probably had to
possess the same financial status as eguites) were in a position to apply. On
late third-century figures this amounted to about 8 per cent of the total
adult male citizen population. After one hundred years this proportion
may well have risen through the influx of wealth from overseas. The
minimum property qualification of equstes in the late Republic, 400,000
sesterces, was modest compared with the average wealth of senators.
The membership of the Senate was determined by the censors every five
years. By the late second century any man who had held at least the curule
aedileship had the right to become a member, unless he was in some way
morally disreputable, and this privilege was extended to ex-tribunes by a
Lex Atinia.

The feature of this aristocracy, which immediately catches the eye, is
the core of families who maintained themselves at the centre of politics
with their members regularly in high office, some patrician, like the
Fabian and Cornelian gentes, some plebeian like the Caecilii Metelli and
branches of the gens Sempronia. A small number of plebeian gentes, still

'0 Crawford 1974 (B 144) nos. 266, 270. On the democratic element in Roman politics in general
see Millar 1986 (¢ 113); Lintote 1987 (a 65).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 47

important in the last years of the Republic, could boast consulships
attained by their members in the late fourth or early third century (in
addition to those above, examples are the Claudii Marcelli, Domitii and
Licinii). In fact about half the consuls in the late third and second
centuries B.c. came from ten gentes, though within these there were often
many different branches. However, this does not mean that the Roman
aristocracy was a closed group — like the mediaeval Venetian aristocracy,
for example. Sallust complained that the nobility passed the consulship
from hand to hand and thought that a new man sullied the dignity of the
office. Yet one third of those who reached the consulship between the
Second Punic War and the end of the Republic were from families with
no consular members in the last three generations and of these only
about 10 per cent probably had praetorian antecedents. Only one third of
these consulars without consular ancestry had a consular son, whereas
the sons of those with consular ancestry were more likely to maintain
consular standing in their generation, especially about the time of the
Second Punic War. Thus outside the leading families in the aristocracy
there were many gains and losses of the status that went with high office,
and it is also likely that at the fringe of the Senate its composition by
families was fluid even before the admission of new recruits into Sulla’s
enlarged Senate from enfranchised Italian communities.!!

The Senate was the meeting-place of the governing class and the only
official location where genuine debate about politics could take place. As
such, it settled matters which otherwise would have led to controversy
between magistrates and between them and the rest of the governing
class, such as the allocation of provinces, troops and money. Moreover,
it was the only body which could be expected to make authoritative
policy recommendations to magistrates, whether these were matters for
executive action or to be formulated into legislative proposals before an
assembly. Its decrees, though technically never more than advice to
magistrates, had in Italy and elsewhere among Rome’s allies the effect of
mass-edicts by Roman magistrates, although the majority of the senators
were not in office at the time Indeed, these decrees were treated as more
authoritative than a magistrate’s decision.!? They also were privileged,
in so far as the Senate, unlike the magistrates who executed the decrees,
could not be held to account for taking arbitrary decisions, even if these
were contrary to the will of the populus Romanus.

The essence of procedure in the Senate was that the convening
magistrate (consul, praetor or tribune) put forward a subject for
discussion and then asked the opinion of members in order of seniority.
When these had either delivered opinions at length or indicated their

'! Sall. Iug. 73.6-7; Hopkins and Burton 1983 (A 54) 5 5ff.
'2 Polyb. v1.13.4-5; Bruns nos. 36ff; Sherk 1984 (B 239) esp. no. 9, lines 63ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

48 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

assent to a previous speaker, he selected a motion or motions for a vote
from among the opinions put forward. The consequent resolution might
be vetoed by tribunes, so becoming a senatus auctoritas, which had not the
claim to obedience of an uncontested decree, senatus consultum. The senatus
consulta were recorded permanently in writing in the treasury, like laws.
(Auctoritates by contrast might also be drafted but would not be
engraved on bronze.) Generally, the authority of the senior senators, the
ex-consuls called to speak first, would have been decisive in debates,
though there was to be one famous occasion on 5 December 63 B.c. when
the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators hung on the opinions of a
praetor-elect and a tribune-elect, Caesar and Cato. On many items of
business a consensus would have prevailed. Yet on occasions — for
example over the treatment of Carthage in 152 and in 133 over Ti.
Gracchus’ agrarian bill and later his attempt to get re-elected — there was
major controversy between leading members.!3 It is still not clear on our
evidence, however, how policy was normally formed in the Senate, or
whether, as has been suggested, there was an inner ruling group which
was effectively the government of Rome.

According to Sallust, the tradition of politics, factions and every kind
of malpractice had arisen, when the era of concord had ended with the
destruction of Carthage. He talks of two partes, the nobility and the
populus or plebs — the ‘few’ and the ‘many’ of the Greek world. Although
both sides are criticized for tearing the Republic apart, it is the few
powerful men (the Latin potentes is the equivalent of Greek dunatoi, that
is, the governing class), who take effective decisions about foreign and
domestic policy, official postings, war and finance, and so reap the
profits, while the poor die.through war or poverty, expelled from the
land by more powerful men. The nobility prevail through factio— a word
which in its original sense is not equivalent to faction in English, but
means rather the power and influence associated with wealth. Elsewhere
in Sallust factio is said to be the depraved form of friendship, what might
be termed a cabal or conspiracy, or else it is the term for the dominant
class, like the English word ‘establishment’. Cicero similarly uses the
word for an oligarchic ruling group or junta.’4 Sometimes Sallust
portrays Roman politics as a struggle between a largely coherent aristo-
cracy in the Senate and a mass of poor men assisted by a few popular
heroes. However, in his treatment of the late Republic he adopts the
cynicism expressed by Thucydides in the digression on civil strife at
Corcyra: politicians, although they might adopt honest-sounding pro-
grammes of defending the rights of the people or the authority of the
Senate, under the pretext of the public interest strove for their own
power. How far this description was fair, it would be premature to

'3 Astin 1967 (c 2); Badian, 1972 (c 16) 706ff. 14 Seager 1972 (A 109).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 49

decide at this point. It is, however, relevant to point out that such
corrupt politics would have derived their specious appeal from the
existence of genuine traditions of defending the status of the aristocracy
or the rights of the people.

These traditions are frequently alluded to in Cicero’s speeches and
philosophical works. It is the function of the so-called good men (boni or
optimates) to maintain tranquillity and respect for rank (otium cum
dignitate). This was the preservation of the status quo through deference
for the authority of the Senate, which in turn rested on the dignity of its
members, who had been elected to high office by the people. This dignity
depended in theory on merit (virtus), but Cicero makes it plain that
wealth, which in practice gave its possessors the greatest status in the
community, was also a sine qua non. The monopolization of the adjectives
denoting virtue by the wealthy governing class of Rome ~ a characteris-
tic earlier of Greek aristocracies — is first attested in the eighties B.c., but
probably goes back to the second century and reflects the influence of
Greek political thought on Rome. The basic ideology, however, was
fundamental to the aristocracy since the early Republic. There were on
the other hand dissenters, those who wanted their actions and words to
be agreeable to the popu/us and legislated in the interest of the masses, the
populares. Though Cicero was sceptical about the pretensions of such
political opponents of his in his own day, he conceded that in the past at
least men had genuinely sought to serve the will of the common people.!5

It is easy to see how Mommsen was misled into likening the optimates
and populares to Conservatives and Liberals in the British parliament. His
successors and critics, however, were able to show that this was simply
not the way Roman politics worked, chiefly by appealing to Cicero’s less
philosophical utterances. There were in fact no political parties in the
modern sense with organizations and formulated policies. The optimates
might embrace at some periods the whole governing class at Rome,
while the populares were essentially individuals who might on occasion
combine with or imitate others of their kind, but at bottom lacked
coherence and continuity on the political scene. It is hard to link popularis
politicians on the basis of acommon programme and, although they did
share a modus operandi — that of direct appeal to the assembly bypassing
the Senate, this tactic was sometimes adopted by those of conservative
outlook. Men did not usually stand for elections by appealing to policies.
(Cicero, if we take as genuine the letter from his brother on canvassing,
was advised to avoid political commitments.) Indeed men entered
politics to fulfil personal expectations, either of maintaining their due
place in Roman society or of achieving a new rank commensurate with
their worth, and to assist their relatives and friends. Their virtaus was to

15 Ferrary 1982 (A 29); Perelli 1982 (a 90) 2$ff; Balsdon 1960 (F 14).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

50 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

find expression in the offices they held and the glory they derived from
their service to the state, especially in war.'6

On what basis, then, were political alliances made among senators? In
Cicero’s day these were essentially viewed as personal connexions, based
on kinship and friendship (amicitia) and cemented by exchange of
political and private services (beneficia or officia). The latter was summed
up in the word gratia, which meant both the thanks due to someone for
his help and the consequent influence of the donor. Ideally political allies
were intellectually and temperamentally congenial with mutual liking
for one another; in practice more utilitarian relationships were to be
found. There is a resemblance to British politics in the eighteenth
century and many statements made about this period can be illuminat-
ingly transferred to the politics of Rome. Charles James Fox’s remark, ‘Is
it possible to be happy in acting with people of whom one has the worst
opinions, and being on a cold footing (which must be the case) with all
those whom one loves best, and with whom one passes one’s life?’, could
have been taken straight from Cicero’s treatise On Friendship. The late
Republic and the British political scene in the eighteenth century were
both worlds of small political groups constructed out of families and
friendships, which could swiftly break and reform, and whose members
frequently had conflicting allegiances.'7

There are, however, important differences. Although both British and
Roman politicians sought office and its rewards for themselves and their
friends, there was constitutionally no ‘government’ by a political group
in Rome. Rather, the Senate relied on a persistent consensus and the co-
operation of leading magistrates for stability in policy. Nor were there at
Rome the factors that promoted coherence out of the loose and shifting
interplay of politicians in Britain — the basic mould of government and
opposition and the large resources of patronage available to govern-
ment. The nearest parallel to the latter at Rome are the posts of legates,
tribunes and prefects at the disposal of great commanders, notably those
available to Caesar and Pompey. The granting of these posts and
advocacy in the courts were probably the two most important ways of
winning friends by performing services.

On the evidence of the regular assistance afforded by friends and
kinsfolk at elections and during political prosecutions and their less
frequent association in political policies, Miinzer and his followers have
argued that, rather than large ideological parties, small family factions
determined the course of Roman politics: these sought by investing their
members with magistracies, commands and prestige to become de facto
the government at Rome and to dominate the state in their own interest.

16 Earl 1961 (B 31) ch. 3; Strasburger 1939 (A 116); Meier 1966 (A 72) 116ff; Wiseman 1985 (A 132)
1-43. ‘7 R. Pares, King George III and the Politicians (Oxford, 1953) 75.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 51

There are several problems with this thesis. The first is the sheer lack of
evidence from the period for which we have the most detailed infor-
mation (that covered by Cicero’s letters) of factions of this kind.
Certainly, everyone, not least Cicero, strove to acquire as many personal
connexions as possible with influential men and with associations like
tribes, guilds (co//egia) and clubs (sodalitates), but in this they were not
limited to men with whom they regularly associated. An important text
from the very end of the Republic, when a cleavage had developed
between the supporters of Caesar and of Pompey, contrasts party-
sentiment with personal connexions. The reference to party-sentiment is
itself unparalleled, and this is contrasted with the connexions (necessitu-
dines) which we know from Cicero’s writings to have been regarded as
the important factor in other elections.'8 Secondly, even if we assume
that factions of the kind presupposed by Minzer existed, though
concealed by our sources, it is not plain how they would have regularly
mobilized the votes needed to get members of the group into office and
the measures they favoured into effect. Scipio Aemilianus was dismayed
in 142, when Q. Pompeius, whom he believed to be his supporter, broke
away and campaigned on his own account for the consulship against
Scipio’s favoured candidate, C. Laelius. Scipio and Ti. Gracchus, who
were not only cousins but connected by marriage through Gracchus’
sister, were at odds politically and further divided by Gracchus’ marriage
to the daughter of an opponent of Scipio’s, Appius Claudius.

The links produced by marriages and adoptions produced such a
complex network that it becomes difficult to isolate a stable unit between
the microcosm of the individual politician and his intumates and the
macrocosm of the posentes (the leading senators) viewed as a whole. An
election like that of 54 B.c. could create bewildering uncertainty about
allegiances. As for the belief that the type of faction envisaged could rely
on a block of supporters through c/iente/ae,!9 as we have seen earlier, this
is not supported by the evidence about the early second century. This
does not mean that patron-client relationships were unimportant. A
contemporary document, the /ex de repetundis inscribed on bronze (see p.
§) proves the contrary. This disqualifies as patroni (advocates) of the
accuser and witnesses for the prosecution those who are in any patron—
client relationship (fides) with the accused. It is of course on occasions
when a man’s political existence, if not his continued membership of the
community, was at stake, that he could expect the support of friends and
connexions, whatever their political views (the best example of this is the
roll-call of incompatibles who supported M. Scaurus in 5 4).20 However,

18 Cic, Comment. Pet. 16-19, 30; Fam. viti.14.t; Meier 1966 (A 72).

19 See most recently Rouland 1979 (4 99), and fora critique of such views Brunt 1988 (A 19) 382ff.
20 Gruen 1974 (C 209) 332-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

52 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

an important feature of the clauses in the /ex de repetundis is that they refer
to both present and past patron—client relationships, demonstrating
both their impermanence and on the other hand the residual effect that
was believed to survive a break in such a connexion. In this light such
links seem less rigid and more likely to conflict with one another. The
very growth of bribery is testimony to a weakening rather than a
strengthening of control by the aristocracy. We may be inclined to apply
what Namier wrote about Britain, contrasting aristocratic bullying with
the demand for benefits from below: ‘Corruption was not a shower-bath
from above .. . but a waterspout springing from the rock of freedom to
meet the demands of the People’.?!

One way of meeting such arguments is to accept that groups were not
rigid and their ascendancies on the whole not very effective, but to
regard the faction thesis as an ideal model of the Roman political game.
Even then theoretical difficulties remain. Miinzer’s statement, ‘Every
political party strives for power and a dominant position in the state’,?? is
for us today a self-evident truth: it might indeed be taken as an analytic
statement defining the word ‘party’ and distinguishing it from other
political associations and pressure-groups. Yet one should not call a
Roman political group a party and endow it with the characteristics
implied by that word now. Roman groups did strive for office for their
members, but this did not correspond to placing itself in government, as
it did in eighteenth-century Britain. In order to prove that, one would
have to show that voting in the Senate was regularly on group lines; and
this was not even true of the last twelve months of the Republic, when
battle-lines were already being drawn between Caesarian and Pompeian
supporters, still less can it be asserted about the Senate’s conduct in 133.

As for optimates and populares, even though they came from the same
social class with its framework of individual and family connexions, this
is no reason to deny the divergence of ideology highlighted by Cicero.
There were standard popularis themes — the physical welfare of the
populus, to be maintained by land-distribution and later that of corn; the
preservation of liberty through the laws about provocatio, secret ballot,
criminal courts and other limitations on the aristocracy. There was also
in Cicero’s day a recognized canon of popu/aris leaders, stretching back to
C. Flaminius, tribune and author of an agrarian law in 232. On the other
side men talked of the defence of law and order and of the treasury.3 Of
course, those with one ideology did on occasion borrow the political
clothes of the other. An optimate like M. Livius Drusus (tribune, 91) or
Cato Uticensis might pass a bill in the popular interest about grain or

21 L. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, 2nd edn (London, 1968) 104. On

electoral bribery at Rome see Lintott 1990 (a 66).
22 Miinzer 1920 (A 79) I. 2% Cic. Acad. 11.13; Sest.g8; Sall. Iug. 31; H. 1.55; 111.48M.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM 53

land for reasons of expediency, or else, like Cicero, pose as a popw/aris in
order to make his political mark. The extent to which popularis
politicians pursued their own interests more than those of the men they
claimed to represent may be judged from the history that follows, but the
mere possession of personal ambition does not disqualify a man from
advancing the interests of others.

It is hard to pick on specific destabilizing forces in Roman politics
after the Third Punic War. Conflicts between senatorial authority and
the will of assemblies were not new. The tension latent between the
imperium of the consul and senatorial auctoritas on one side and tribuni-
cian obstruction on the other was embedded in the constitution.
Although the Romans tended to equate ‘new things’ with revolution,
their constitution was continually altering through statutes and prece-
dents creating new traditions, which were acceptable, if they could be
reconciled with the basic ethos of society. Nevertheless, the existence of
two distinct political traditions was a potential source of conflict. To this
we must add an external political influence (apart from the social and
economic problems to which we shall shortly turn). Just as the Romans
had become self-conscious about their history under Greek influence, so
they were becoming self-conscious about their constitution through
Greek philosophy. Even before Polybius’ history was published,
Romans were discussing their politics in Greek terms. Regular contact
with Greek thinkers is attested for Scipio Aemilianus, his nephew Q.
Tubero, C. Laelius and Ti. Gracchus. Theoretical study may have
stiffened both oligarchic and democratic sympathies in Roman politi-
cians and made them more reluctant to compromise. More concretely,
some of the political measures of the period before Sulla appear to reflect
the political methods and legal procedures of Athenian democracy.?4

II. THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM AND THE ECONOMY

Even our ancient sources, preoccupied as they are with constitutional
change and moral decline, do not neglect the economic and social
conditions of the second century. Appian and Plutarch provide a
generally consistent picture of the agrarian problem which was the target
of Ti. Gracchus’ legislation, and this account has been the core of the
lengthier explanations of modern scholars. According to Appian, the
Romans had exploited the territory seized during their conquest of Italy
in order to reward and strengthen the farming people from whom they
drew their military manpower. On cultivated land they either founded
new cities, that is colonies, or they assigned, sold or rented allotments to

24 Plut. Alem. 6.8-10; Ti. Gracch. 8.6; Cic. Tuse. 1v.4-5; Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B
170) 219; Nicolet 1972 (F 124) 212ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

54 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

individuals; land, which had become unworked through war, they
allowed to be cultivated without formal distribution by anyone who
wished, in return for a rent based on produce — 10 per cent on crops, 20
per cent on fruits — or an appropriate tax on head of cattle. It should be
stressed that this last category of land was still the public property of the
Roman people (ager publicus), as indeed was rented land and even some of
the land sold (the ¢rientabula granted to rich men as partial repayment for
loans during the Second Punic War). Our sources tell us that in practice
the rich had come to monopolize the public land occupied at will,
acquiring holdings by persuasion or force and farming these with the aid
of chattel-slaves, rather than the free men who might be taken away for
military service. Hence the rich became richer, slaves more numerous
and the poor not only poorer but fewer. A law had been passed limiting
holdings of public land to 500 sagera (125 hectares or about 300 acres),
but this was disregarded. Hence Gracchus deplored not only the
injustice which was being done to those who fought for Rome but the
danger of replacing potential warriors with slaves, who could not be
used for military service but might on the contrary rebel.”

Historians in this century from Tenney Frank and Rostovtzeff to
Toynbee and Brunt” have seen the accumulation of ager publicus by the
wealthy as but one feature of a more general change in the nature of
Roman agriculture, the growth of large-scale ‘capitalist’ exploitation,
which affected both public land and that owned by private citizens. The
wealth deriving from empire through booty, commerce and the private
profits of public enterprises (such as tax-contracts and the supply of the
army overseas) was concentrated in the hands of the upper classes. They
sought to perpetuate and increase this wealth by investment in the
agriculture likely to produce the most satisfactory returns. Their guides
in this were the Hellenistic writers on agriculture, especially the
Carthaginian writer Mago, whose work was translated into Latin by D.
Silanus, and Cato the Censor, who had written an original notebook on
agriculture in Latin. Their works detailed how land could be best used to
produce wine and oil for sale and to rear cattle on a large scale, primarily
through employing slaves. The peasant or modest landholder, who used
the labour of his family and whose farming might be disrupted by
military service, was unable to compete with this large-scale and
economically rational agriculture. Thus the poor man, who was dispos-
sessed of his land, was afflicted not only by injustice and violence but,
worse still, the harsh facts of economic life.

Other ancient sources tend to confirm the basic reliability of Appian’s
account of the condition of public land, whose ultimate sources were

25 App. BCiv. 1.7.26-10.40; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8; Greenidge — Clay 1-4; Tibiletti 1948 (c 142); 1950(c
143): 2% Frank 1920 (A 34); Rostovtzeff 1926 (a 97); Toynbee 1965 (a 121); Brunt 1971 (A 16).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM 55

probably the contemporary memoir of C. Gracchus on his brother’s
work and (with an opposite bias) the histories of C. Fannius. The
existence of a law, irksome to senators, which restricted holdings of ager
publicus to 500 iugera and limited grazing, is attested by a speech of Cato in
167, and in the view of many scholars it is to a legislator of this period
rather than, as Varro thought, C. Licinius Stolo in the fourth century
that we should attribute the limits specified. Excessive grazing on public
land had led to prosecutions by aediles, while the growth of large-scale
ranches in south Italy is demonstrated by the revolts of herdsmen and
other slaves. The Romans would have acquired large amounts of public
land there through confiscations after the Second Punic War, including
areas in towns and villages. In 173 the consul L. Postumius had been sent
to restrict encroachment on public land in the ager Campanus. Here any
large-scale farming would have probably embraced the cultivation of
vines, olives and cereals, perhaps with slave-gangs, as in Sicily.?7

It is also significant that the interdicts, legal injunctions used to
guarantee possession or the recovery of possession, especially when it
had been lost through violence, developed in this period (the fundamen-
tal interdict, ‘uti possidetis’, dates from before 161). Equally there is no
doubt about the availability of slaves. For example L. Aemilius Paulus,
Scipio Aemilianus’ father, had enslaved 150,000 men in Epirus in 168/7
and the father of Ti. Gracchus a proverbially large number from
Sardinia, when consul in 177. The great slave revolts in Sicily, the first
contemporary with the tribunate of Ti. Gracchus himself, have already
been discussed in their provincial context (pp. 25—7). A magistrate who
helped to suppress the first of these claimed to have restored 917 slaves to
Italian owners. In fact there were at the same time outbreaks of rebellion
by slaves in Italy itself, including one involving 4,000 slaves at Mintur-
nae. Gracchus is said by his brother to have been inspired to propose his
legislation by seeing chain-gangs of slaves in Etruria, while he was on a
journey from Rome to Pisa.28 What no ancient source tells us are the
general scale and any regional variations in the growth of landholdings
at the expense of the poor. Nevertheless, the pattern of events outlined
by Appian seems consistent with the other evidence.

It is much more difficult to develop plausible hypotheses about the
general state of Italian agriculture and its social implications. Cato’s
jottings are fundamental, but cannot sustain an excessive superstructure
of theory. The money which flowed into private hands from Rome’s
conquests and the spread of Italian commerce had to be placed
somewhere. Some, as we have seen, was invested in property abroad (ch.

27 ORF fr. 167; Livy xxi1.1-8; Tibiletti 1948 (c 142) 191ff.

28 Lintott 1968 (A 62), 126; Polyb. xxx.15; Livy xu1.28.8; De Vir. I//. $7.2; ILLRP 454; Oros.
v.9.4f; Obseq. 27-27b; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8.9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

56 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

2, passim), some in silver and luxury-goods, but the bulk would have
been used to buy land in Italy. Cato’s work gave advice on how this
should be done, not necessarily in such a way as to maximize profit, but
rather so that the investment should not be squandered: if deployed
rationally, it would create both material rewards and reputation for the
owner. Cato’s four first choices were vineyard, watered garden, osier-
bed and olive-yard in that order. Grazing and cereal land follow. He does
not think in vast units: 100 éagera of vineyard, 120 or 240 éugera of olives
are the modules for which the optimum personnel and equipment are
calculated. The economics of pasturage are not really discussed in what
survives of his writings, nor the appropriate balance in making a mixed
farm, though it is assumed that the owner will use the manure from his
animals to fertilize his crops and fruit.29

In itself the idea of mixed farming is as old as Homer, and even
Rostovtzeff was forced to admit that there is no real evidence for
technological improvements in agriculture during the Hellenistic age.
(An exception to this in Italy is the olive-mill.) What Romans would
have learnt from agricultural writers was more concerned with the
allocation of money and labour. Nor did this necessarily require a very
large investment: the ‘villa’ system of farming recommended by Cato
could be practised on holdings of 100-200 éugera, the size of allotments
made in colonies such as that founded by C. Gracchus in Africa.
However, a rich man could certainly have owned a number of farms of
this size, large by peasant standards but small in comparison with later
estates, and the evidence of the Ciceronian period suggests that this was
common practice. Furthermore, heavy investment in grazing would
have required much greater tracts of territory (especially since transhu-
mance between winter and summer pastures was common) and may
have been the main reason for the monopolization of ager publicus by the
rich.30

At this point the very incomplete archaeological evidence provides a
partial check on hypothesis. We have the remains of the ‘villas’ (Cato’s
term), which were the centre of rich men’s estates. These contained
wine-presses, oil-mills, storage-vats and slave-quarters, as well as recep-
tion-rooms, porticoes and peristyles for the owner. Added to this is the
evidence from shipwrecks and deposits on shore of the export of wine,
one of Cato’s favoured crops, to the western Mediterranean. Most
Republican villas are dated to the first century B.c., but a second-century
origin is attested for some in Latium, Campania, the ager Cosanus and
perhaps Samnium. However, the existence of such farms did not entail
the eclipse of the smallholders in the second century. Their existence is

29 Cato Agr. 1.7; 3.5; 10-11; cf. 3.2.
%© Brunt 1971 (A 16) 371-5; Gabba and Pasquinucci 1979 (G 95).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM 57

archaeologically attested in the ager Cosanus, eastern Samnium, the ager
Falernus and Campania, and perhaps in southern Etruria (though the
evidence here has come under question) and should be inferred else-
where, given the need for the villas to recruit free labour at harvest-time.
They would have also provided some local market for the villa to
supplement its outlets further afield. In short, there are no good grounds
for inferring a general decline of the small independent farmer in the
second century, apart from what our sources tell us about the condition
of the ager publicus. We can, however, see the beginnings of a system of
agriculture, which was to lead to an immense concentration of land ina
few hands by the early Principate — the /atifundia of the elder Pliny.

It is equally difficult to give more precision to Appian’s statements
about social conditions in Italy. We have no reason to doubt that poor
farmers who lived on ager publicus were either landless or under pressure
from great landowners, especially those whose business was cattle-
raising. The problem is the extent of this phenomenon and its effect on
the military might of Rome. The heads of adult males (capita) counted by
the censors gradually declined from 337,022 in 164/3 B.C. to 317,933 in
136/5 at a time when losses of soldiers on campaign cannot have been so
serious as during the preceding sixty years. The view that these figures
represent only those who had sufficient property to be enrolled in the
classes of the comitia centuriata is without support in the sources and is
rebutted by the very fact that those below the classes were called capite
censi. More probably it was the total adult male population that was
counted, or at least those who performed their civic duty in registering
(economic depression may well have led to a failure to register). When
the considerable, though unquantifiable amount of manumission in the
second century is taken into account — which should have led to an
increase in the census total, if birth and survival rates of existing citizens
remained stable — then it seems that a decline in population ora decline in
registration had occurred. The implications for Rome’s military
strength, however, depend on assumptions about how many of these
were assidui, listed in the classes and regularly liable for legionary service.
In fact the total number of citizens counted in the middle of the second
century was greater than the corresponding number before the Second
Punic War. Estimates of the quantity of assidui ¢. 130 B.C. vary from
75,000 tO 200,000 men. In the latter case there was no fundamental
shortage of citizens for the army, in the former there was.3? In this
uncertainty it is tempting to put one’s faith in Ti. Gracchus and say that

3! Giardina and Schiavone 1981 (G 104); Rathbone 1983 (G 208); 1981 (G 207); Frederiksen, 1970-

1 (B 292) (but cf. Liverani 1984 (B 308)); Garnsey 1979 (G 97); Celuzza and Regoli 1982 (B 270);
Cotton 1979 (B 280).

32 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 22-5, 75-7; Astin 1967 (c 2) 337; Rich 1983 (c 121) 294-5; cf. the table of
census figures on p. 603.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

58 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

the crisis must have been grave, were it not for the probability that his
view of the situation was impressionistic, based on his seeing fewer free
citizens in the fields and knowing the difficulty of recruitment. It would
be imprudent to envisage him doing careful calculations like a modern
civil servant, especially when what we know of him suggests a man
guided by a moral vision of what society in Italy should be.

Some scholars have sought to add to the agrarian crisis a crisis in
Rome itself, caused by the increase in population and lack of employ-
ment there. However, the evidential foundation for this is weak. Issues
of silver coin did not in fact decline in the period following the revaluing
of the denarius from ten to sixteen asses ¢. 140 B.C., and indeed the higher
value given to silver coinage increased the amount of money in
circulation. Nor was there a significant decline in public building activity
after 138. However, although there is nothing to show urban unemploy-
ment in these years, the problem of feeding the city was considerable. A
recently discovered document from Thessaly shows a Q. Metellus
buying grain there as aedile. The quantity was about 450,000 modii of
wheat, which would have been about two and a half months’ supply for
the plebs at Rome in the late Republic but at this date should have
sufficed for nearly double that time. The purchase seems to have been
made in the period of spring to mid-summer before the new harvests in
the West, when the price of grain was at its height. It seems mote likely to
be a crisis measure to deal with a sudden scarcity. Such conditions might
have been created by the Sicilian slave revolt ¢. 135 B.c. or the plague of
locusts which devastated Africa in 125.53 The price of grain varied
dramatically by season and region, apart from any special pressures
through sudden scarcity. According to Polybius the famine-price in Italy
during 211 B.C. was ten sestertii a modius, whereas strikingly low prices
were to be found locally in Lusitania and Cisalpine Gaul about the
middle of the second century of one sestertius a modius and about one asa
modius respectively. Livy records prices of four asses and two asses for
special distributions ¢. 200 B.c. These prices are low compared with those
attested in the Hellenistic world about this time, which do not fall below
one denarius (= four sestertii= ten asses) for an equivalent amount. What
regular prices at Rome were by the middle of the second century can only
be conjectured — perhaps not as much as one denarius a modius. Not is it
clear what effect, if any, the revaluing of the denarius had on the price of
grain. The only pointer is the price C. Gracchus chose for his corn
distributions — 64 asses a modius.*4 This is in almost the same proportion to
4 asses as the rise in the value of the denarius, and perhaps indicates that

33 Crawford 1974 (B 144) 11.640ff; Coarelli 1977 (G 42) 17-18; Garnsey, Gallant and Rathbone
1984 (B 156). Cf. Cic. 1 Verr, 3.72; Oros, v.11.2-5.
4 Schol. Bob. 135 St.; Asc. Pis. 8c; cf. Rdet. Her. 1.21. Gamsey and Rathbone, 1985 (c 60).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

AFTER THE FALL OF CARTHAGE 59

the cost of everyday items paid for in bronze asses had tended to increase
in proportion to the rise in the value of silver.

It is appropriate to end this survey by returning to the social and
economic factor to which the ancient sources gave most weight — the
sheer wealth of the upper classes, symbolized by the probably inaccurate
but paradigmatic figure which Cicero assigned to P. Licinius Crassus
Mucianus (cos. 131), surnamed ‘the rich’, that of 25 million denarii. Such
wealth provided immense opportunities for acquiring political support.
The first law against bribery (ambitus) was passed in 181, the year after the
Lex Orchia, the first sumptuary law which limited the expenditure on
guests invited to dinner. The Lex Fannia followed in 161 and in 143 its
provisions were extended to all Romans in Italy by the Lex Didia — a
demonstration that conspicuous expenditure was not confined to the
governing class.*5 The purchasing power of the rich drew to Italy slaves
and luxury goods. One likely reason for the revaluing of the denarius and
sestertins is increasing demand and a higher market price for silver
through its use in cutlery, plate and other items of house-furnishing. The
expenditure of the wealthy would have stimulated economic life in the
cities and created employment among the free poor as well as slaves,
especially in the building and retail trades. However, the price to be paid
was the concentration of economic power and appetites among the few.
Denunciation of extravagance-And praise of old-fashioned frugality was
a theme common to Cato the Censor, Scipio Aemilianus and L.
Calpurnius Piso, historian and consul in 133. Such men realized the
political implications of the increase of wealth, though none of them had
any remedies for these that were more than palliatives.

III, POLITICS AFTER THE FALL OF CARTHAGE

In the years immediately following the destruction of Carthage there
were two conspicuous features of political life —- vigorous tribunician
activity and a tendency among leading men in the Republic to be
‘accident-prone’.5 In 145 a bill was proposed by C. Licinius Crassus that
priesthoods should be assigned by election rather than co-option — a
proposal that was rendered more attractive to the people by the tribune’s
turning to address the Forum at large rather than the more select
gathering in the Comitium. C. Laelius, the friend of Scipio Aemilianus
and praetor in that year, successfully opposed it by an appeal to tradition.

35 Cic. Rep. 1.17; Shatzman 1975 (A 112); Lintott 1972 (A 63) 631-2.

3 In general source-references to the following narrative may be found in MRR and Greenidge—
Clay. Those given in footnotes are selected for emphasis or because they are difficult to locate. The
political history of 146-13 3 B.c. is well described in Astin 1967 (c 2) 97-136, 175-89. See also CAH
vu? 191-6,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

6o 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

The following year there was the sumptuary law, the Lex Didia (see p.
59), which extended the legal limit on expenditure on banquets through-
out Italy. Then in 142 Scipio conducted an especially rigorous censor-
ship, during which he orated on the solemnity of his office. However, in
the elections for the consulships of 141, his favoured candidate Laelius
was defeated, after Q. Pompeius, who as a friend of Scipio’s was
expected to support Laelius, deserted him and canvassed on his own
account. Moreover, Scipio himself was charged before the people in 140
by the tribune Ti. Claudius Asellus on account of misconduct in his
censorship. For Asellus had been humiliated by Scipio through demo-
tion from his rank in the knights. However, Asellus was unsuccessful in
this, as he was in his attempt to prevent the consul Q. Servilius Caepio
from setting out for his Spanish province, probably as a result of a
dispute over the levy of troops. We also hear of a resolution in the
Senate, promoted by the consular Appius Claudius (later Ti. Gracchus’
father-in-law) that there should be only one levy a year. The same year
Laelius, who had now reached the consulship, proposed an agrarian bill
to deal with the monopolization of the public land by the rich, only to
withdraw it in face of opposition from those whose interests he was
damaging.

In 139 a tribune achieved real success. A. Gabinius passed the first law
about secret ballot, establishing its use in elections. We know nothing
about the circumstances in which this bill was enacted. No doubt it was
presented as a blow struck for the /ibertas of the people — which indeed it
was — but it may also have been argued to be a blow against corruption,
since those who bribed could no longer check who voted for them, and
thus it would have been acceptable to those who were afraid of
demagogic canvassing, such as practised by Q. Pompeius. The year
following two energetic tribunes, C. Curiatius and Sex. Licinius, created
a precedent by imprisoning the consuls, because they would not allow
tribunes to secure the exemption of men from conscription. Curiatius
also pressed the consuls to propose special purchases of corn, similar to
those made by Q. Metellus according to the document from Thessaly (p.
58). While resisting this suggestion at a public meeting, Scipio Nasica
secured silence from the contio by saying: “Be quiet please, citizens: I know
more about the public interest than you.’ Whether purchases were made
or not, is unclear. The famine, however, brought the poor out on to the
streets, and one of the tribunes who died in office was given a funeral
by the people. There were also notable acquittals. Two ex-governors
charged with taking money illegally from provincials (de repetundis)
escaped in spite, or because, of their enmity with Scipio and perhaps with
the help of bribery. Moreover, a group of state contractors (publicant),
who had leased the pitch-works in the Silva Sila in Calabria, were

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

AFTER THE FALL OF CARTHAGE 61

eventually freed of charges relating to murders perpetrated by their
slave-gangs. Meanwhile, on the other side of the straits of Messina the
first Sicilian slave revolt was perhaps already in its early stages.

A second law about secret ballot, the Lex Cassia, relating to trials
before assemblies (on non-capital charges), was passed in 137, after
Scipio Aemilianus had dissuaded the tribune Antius Briso from vetoing
it. It is possible that the exception for capital cases was introduced by the
tribune to meet initial objections to the bill, the subject of which was
mote sensitive for the aristocracy than elections in that it involved their
potential ruin. However, the year was more famous for the scandal over
the treaty that C. Hostilius Mancinus and his quaestor Ti. Gracchus had
negotiated when surrounded by the Numantines in Spain. In 140 Q.
Pompeius had himself disowned an inglorious treaty he had made with
the same people under less desperate circumstances. On this occasion
nothing was done until Mancinus and his quaestor had returned to
Rome, where both Pompeius’ and Mancinus’ behaviour was investi-
gated by a tribunal presided over by a consul of 136, Furius Philus, with
Scipio Aemilianus and Laelius among his advisers. Their decision,
accepted by Mancinus, was to repudiate his treaty and to surrender
Mancinus naked and in bonds to the Spaniards as expiation of the
religious offence arising from the breach of his promise. The assembly
accepted this proposal. Gracchus was not to be surrendered, in spite of
the fact that he had been instrumental in making the treaty through the
influence with the Spaniards he had inherited from his father. The
decisions were controversial, and may have led to the deliberate
rewriting of the history of the agreement made with the Samnites at the
Caudine Forks in 321, which was recalled on contemporary denarii
issued by Ti. Veturius, though the treatment of a praetor of Sardinia in
236 provided a more recent precedent. Scipio was suspected of favour-
ing his relative, but Gracchus was anyhow popular with the army which
he had helped to escape. He for his part was indignant that his own
reputation for good faith (fides) among the Spaniards had been des-
troyed, and in Cicero’s view this, combined with the fright he received
from the senatorial investigation, explained his defection from the
optimate cause.3?

Meanwhile in Spain the proconsul Lepidus began a war contrary to
instructions from the Senate, was ineffective and so both deprived of his
command and fined when prosecuted later at Rome. As a result of the
failures in Spain and the simultaneous threat of the Sicilian slave revolt
Scipio was exempted in 135 from the current law forbidding re-election
to the consulship by a plebiscite passed on the advice of the Senate.
Nevertheless, when he became consul in 134 and was assigned Spain as

37 Crawford 1974 (B 144) Ino. 234; Crawford 1973 (F 39); Cic. Har. Resp. 43.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

62 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

his province, he was refused permission to conscript new troops by the
Senate and granted no immediate cash. Instead he took a troop of clients
and friends from Italy and contingents sent by cities and foreign kings.
Among them were Ti. Gracchus’ younger brother Caius, C. Marius, a
man of equestrian rank from Arpinum, and the Numidian prince
Jugurtha.

IV. TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.

The decade which preceded Ti. Gracchus’ tribunate showed consider-
able ambivalence in the attitudes both of the Senate and the assemblies.
On the one hand, the Senate was still the body that had presided over the
defeats of Carthage, Syria and Macedon, conscious of Rome’s military
reputation and reluctant to appear soft; on the other hand there was a
perception that Rome’s resources were not unlimited and some members
were prepared to admit that all was not well at home. The assemblies for
their part continued to love a great general, but the people were
becoming more restive than they had been for some time under the
hardships caused by military service, shortages of corn and the land
problem. When Ti. Gracchus became tribune in December 134, he
appears to have been already regarded as a friend of the people and he
was encouraged by graffiti on public buildings and monuments to
recover the public land which was being held in excess of the legal limit.
The issue had come to life in Laelius’ consulship; more might be
expected of Gracchus as a man from the core of the nobility (his father
had been consul twice and censor). The proposal that he made was
generous in its treatment of offenders. Existing occupiers of public land,
who had no formal lease, were to be guaranteed possession without rent
of 500 éugera (125 hectares) with an additional 250 for each child. What
remained was then to be distributed to the poor by a three-man
commission in allotments which could not be sold. A possessor could
thus easily maintain at least one villa-estate from what once had been
entirely public land. The rub lay in the commission, because holdings
were to be assigned at its discretion, and this meant that the commis-
sioners could repossess on behalf of the public the best-developed land
and that which had been used as security for debts and dowries. This
point would have been emphasized, if Gracchus, as Plutarch states, was
provoked by opposition into including a clause demanding immediate
evacuation of all land held beyond the legal limit.38

Vital uncertainties remain about this apparently straightforward
proposal. These are first, the legal status both of the land left to existing
possessors and that to be newly assigned; secondly, eligibility for the

38 App. BCiv. 1.9.37; 10.39; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8.10; 10.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 63

new allotments, especially whether allies could participate; thirdly, the
size of the new allotments. Here the most important evidence is provided
by the agrarian law of 111 B.c. engraved on one face of the so-called
‘Tabula Bembina’. This law seems to have brought to an end the process
of land-surveying and reallocation in Italy, which began in 133. The first
ten lines, after listing various types of land and buildings which were
public in 133 and since then had been in some way assigned, declare them
all now to be private property and liable to be recorded in the census.
They are later declared to be free of rent and tax. There is no suggestion
in what survives of the text that the law is repeating an earlier provision,
although it is obvious that the original public status of the land had been
subject to considerable modification since 133. In particular it appears
that before 111 B.c. both the prior possessors of public land, whose
holding was not in excess of the legal limit, and the recipients of new
allotments had been able to bequeath their property, and the rights of the
new owners are recognized by the law.

Our literary sources tell us that Ti. Gracchus made the new allotments
inalienable by sale in 133, though presumably they could be transmitted
by inheritance, and that the right to sell them was first granted in a law
passed a few years after C. Gracchus’ death. C. Gracchus, moreover, had
subjected the new allotments to rent. The holdings of prior possessors
had also been subjected to rent after C. Gracchus’ legislation by the
tribune Sp. Thorius in a bill which allowed them to retain their present
holdings in so far as this was legal.3° Under Roman law public and
private property are two mutually exclusive categories with no interme-
diate stage between them. Nevertheless the Gracchan legislation intro-
duced categories of land with the characteristics of both public and
private property, whose ultimate status raised problems of legal defini-
tion, which were only solved when the law of 111 enacted that the
majority of allotments were to be private land. The present writer would
conclude that no public land was made private by the land legislation
before 111 (except when a straight exchange was made between public
and private landholdings, as described in that text) and furthermore that
no holdings of public land could properly contribute to a person’s rating
in the census before that date. If this is so, it excludes the interpretation of
Ti. Gracchus’ law as a move to increase the availability of military
recruits by assigning the poor sufficient property to become assidui (see p.
57 above) — a policy which would in any case have been short-sighted, if
his long-term aim was to promote viable family farms, which would lead
to the breeding of children.

If Appian and Plutarch preserve the substance and indeed some of the
phraseology of Ti. Gracchus’ rhetoric, then the orator talked of the

App. BCiv. 1.10.38; 27.122; Plut. C. Gracch. 9.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

64 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

poverty and depopulation of Italy as a whole and not just of the
countryside occupied by Romans. Latins and Italian allies almost
certainly suffered from the bill as holders of excessive amounts of public
land, but there is no clear-cut evidence apart from Gracchus’ speeches
that the poor Italians were among the beneficiaries. Indeed, according to
Appian and Cicero the land commission was held to have disturbed the
Latins and allies by breaking treaties in its work up to 129. The only
Roman public land mentioned by the law of 111 as being in the hands of
Latins or allies had either been leased by the censors or been granted en
bloc to a community for exploitation or been given to allies who before
the passage of the law were in some special category (the first two kinds
of land were still Roman ager publicus after 111). We cannot suppose that
grants by the commission to individual allies, whether new recipients or
prior possessors, were mentioned ina lacuna in the first ten lines, since all
the land discussed there was declared private under Roman law and
liable to be registered in a Roman census. Moreover, there was a legal
problem about the assignation of land to allies as a private property.
Except for Latins, who had the right of mexum or commercium (which
allowed them to acquire property at Rome), it would have been
impossible for foreigners (peregrini) to own Roman land, unless they
were granted this right or the land was ceded by Rome to their own
community. Foreigners could enjoy the use of Roman public land as
lessees or possessors, but could not receive it as property which could be
disposed by inheritance or sale. It appears from the Lex agraria of 111
that there were no assignations on a large scale of Roman land to allies as
their private property. Gracchus may have taken the view that, while he
provided for Roman citizens, the Italian communities should follow his
example in their own territories. More practically, short of actually
enfranchising a mass of non-Romans (which one source alleges that he
promised), he had two ways of making good his rhetoric: he might
exempt some public land from assignation to Romans and then either
lease it to poor allies or assign it to their communities on condition that
they did the same. It is not evident that he did either of these things, but it
is possible that the clausula in the law of 111, referring to land exempted
by C. Gracchus from distribution, deals with territory reserved for
occupation by allies.

A prior possessor, who had four children, was entitled to have up to
1,500 éagera of public land; the size of allotments to new recipients must
have been on a different scale. A yardstick is provided by the law of 111
(line 14), which fixes 30 sagera as the maximum which can be made private
by occupation and cultivation after the passage of that law. Such land

40 Lex agraria (Bruns no. 11), lines 1, 3, 4, 6 and passim, cf. 21-2. For the view that land
distribution was connected with enfranchisement, Richardson 1980 (c 123).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 65

would have probably been uncultivated at the time and unlikely to be
immediately productive. It may be noted that at 250 sestertii a iugerum
(one quarter of the price given by Columella in the first century A.D.), a
lot of 30 éugera would have probably put a man into the next to lowest
class of the comitia centuriata. More probably, we should allow for
variations in size depending on the quality of land (10 é‘ugera were later
considered adequate in the fertile ager Campanus). Nor would the
allotments have been expected to provide all the resources required by a
family. It was still possible to graze animals on public pasture-land and
use public woods for activities such as feeding pigs, hunting and
collecting plants and berries. Furthermore, smallholders and their
families could earn extra money as temporary labour especially at
harvest-time, while the women could produce textiles at home.

Although Gracchus’ bill was proposed at a time when military
weakness and the number of slaves seemed urgent political issues, it was
not an emergency measure to deal with a crisis, but one which sought to
improve the social and economic conditions of Italy in the long term.
There can be no question either that Gracchus hoped to further his own
prospects. The career of Scipio Aemilianus and the funeral of the
tribune, who died in 138, showed in their different ways the extent to
which popular support could be mobilized by an adventurous and
charismatic figure. However, in a world where even traditional patron—
client allegiances were shifting, such support could not be relied on
without limit and it is unlikely that he expected to secure a lasting
dominance of Roman politics for himself and his friends. It is more
plausible to see, as Plutarch did, the motive of the Gracchi as the love of
glory or the fear of anonymity. The fundamental preoccupation of the
Roman nobility with fame is attested in this century in the epitaphs of the
Scipiones and the language of Roman comedy as well as in historical
narratives.*! In spite of the Numantine treaty, Gracchus had not become
a maverick apart from the Roman aristocracy and its values. Nor was he
on his own. He had originally the support of one consul of 133, the jurist
P. Mucius Scaevola, and also of his father-in-law Appius Claudius (cos.
143) and the chief pontifex P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus (cos. 131). We
hear also of younger friends of Gracchus from the senatorial order, C.
Carbo and C. Cato.

The bill of 133 was not the first controversial agrarian law to be
proposed at Rome. The Lex Flaminia in 232, which divided the ager
Gallicus on the Adriatic coast into allotments, was only passed after fierce
resistance from the Senate. There had been opposition too to the laws
limiting the use of public land. Gracchus was, however, the first man to
propose redistribution of land already held — something bound to cause

“| Plut. Agis et Cleom. 2.7; Earl 1967 (A 28) 25-35. Wiseman 1985 (A 132) 1-6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

66 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

fear among possessors, recalling the more revolutionary redistributions,
which, though rare, had become a bogey in the Greek world. Both
Cicero and Plutarch compared the Gracchi to the reforming kings of
Sparta in the late third century, Agis IV and Cleomenes III, who sought
to re-establish Spartan austerity and military might by cancelling debts
and redistributing land and property according to the model of the old
Lycurgan constitution. About 150 B.c. Polybius drew a parallel between
the Roman and the Spartan constitution, and Romans had before this
direct acquaintance with Spartan politics, especially with the tyrant
Nabis, who to some extent had continued the policy of the reforming
kings. The comparison between their policy and that of Gracchus was,
therefore, probably in the mind of both the legislator and his opponents.
Although the legislator had practical aims and his opponents practical
objections, which stemmed from the damage to their own interests, the
argument between them would have been conducted in part on
ideological grounds. Cicero regarded land distribution as an offence
against concord and equity because it infringed the principle of private
property. Similar arguments were probably used in 133. Gracchus on his
side took his stand also on justice, that the public land of the Roman
people should belong to the Roman people and not a fraction of it.42
Gracchus’ proposal brought him enormous public support. A con-
temporary historian, Sempronius Asellio, claimed that he was escorted
by not less than 3,000~4,000 men; Posidonius described how men came
flooding in from the countryside to support Gracchus. It is interesting
that those who hoped to benefit from the bill still lived in rural Italy,
presumably working as tenants or hired labourers or on inadequate
holdings of their own. However, according to our chief sources, Appian
and Plutarch, it was not only supporters of the bill but others, who were
afraid for their land, who flocked to Rome, and this inevitably made the
anticipation of the bill more tense. M. Octavius, a former friend of
Gracchus and a colleague in the tribunate, was persuaded by those whose
interests were threatened to veto the proposal when it was put to the
assembly. Gracchus adjourned the assembly and put pressure on
Octavius to give up his obstruction, in particular by threatening in an
edict to veto any other public business himself and by sealing the
treasury. A tribune had the power to veto anything he wanted, but it had
not been the custom to veto bills in the plebian interest (for example,
such obstruction had not, as far as we know, been used against Flaminius
in 232). In 188 four tribunes had been dissuaded from blocking a bill
granting citizenship to Fundi, Formiae and Arpinum by the argument
that such privileges were essentially in the gift of the people. In 137
Scipio Aemilianus had discouraged M. Antius Briso from vetoing the
@ Cic. Off. 11.78-81; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 9.3; App. BCiv. 110-11; Fraccaro 1914 (c 51) 86-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 67

Lex Cassia. However, Octavius continued his obstruction in a further
assembly and this almost led to violence (indeed Plutarch alleges that the
rich seized the voting urns).*

Gracchus was then persuaded by two senior consulars to refer the
matter to the Senate. There was no constitutional requirement to do so,
but it was proposed as a well-established procedure for resolving
differences without a struggle. In practice the Senate made no suggestion
acceptable to Gracchus in spite of his eminent friends: so he resorted to
promulgating in the assembly the abrogation of Octavius’ magistracy on
the ground that he was betraying his office. After appealing insistently to
Octavius to abandon his stand, Gracchus took the vote and Octavius’
deposition was approved by the first eighteen tribes of the thirty-five. He
was consequently dragged from the tribunal by Gracchus’ own freed-
man attendants, while his friends protected him from being lynched by
the crowd. A new tribune was elected in his place and at last Gracchus’
bill could become law without impediment.

While the disregard of the Senate was neither contrary to law nor
tradition (however much men might prefer that Senate and assemblies
should work in co-operation as in the heyday of the middle Republic),
the deposition of a tribune was unprecedented and its legality debatable,
to the extent that T. Annius (cos. 153) challenged Gracchus by a formal
legal wager (sponsio) to show that he had not expelled from office a
colleague who was sacrosanct. A convenient example of the deposition
of a curule magistrate was that of the proconsul M. Lepidus in 136, but it
is doubtful whether this is relevant. The debate in 133 was between the
proposition of Gracchus that a tribune’s office was conditional on his
obeying the people’s will—a view which is found in Polybius’ analysis of
the Roman constitution — and Annius’ contention that the inviolability
of the tribune, however disruptive his behaviour, was the essential
feature of his office. Gracchus’ answer to this was that, while a tribune
must be allowed to do appalling acts like demolishing the temple of
Jupiter Capitolinus and burning the newly constructed shipyards, what
he could not do was to damage the sovereignty of the plebeian assembly.
This debate did not end in 133 and we find echoes of it, probably
deriving from late Republican annalists, in Livy’s treatment of the
actions of Gracchus’ father, when tribune in 187.“

In accordance with the agrarian bill a three-man commission was
elected to pass judgement on old holdings and to assign new holdings of
public land, [[Iviri agris indicandis adsignandis. These were originally
Tiberius himself, his father-in-law Appius Claudius and his brother C.

® Livy xxxvuit.36.7-8; Cic. Brut. 97; Badian 1972 (A 4) 6oqff.
“ Plut. Ti. Gracch. 15.2—3 (ef. Cie. De Or. 1.62); Livy xxxvutt.56; xxx1x.5; Richard 1972 (c 122).
On sponsio see Crook 1976 (F 199).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

68 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

Gracchus. In due course Ti. Gracchus was to be replaced by P. Crassus
Mucianus, and then both Crassus and Appius Claudius by M. Fulvius
Flaccus and C. Papirius Carbo (their names are commemorated on a
number of boundary stones which survive today). However, the Senate
frustrated Tiberius by refusing to give his commission tents and other
equipment from public resources and granting an expense allowance of a
mere six sestertit a day — this on the proposal of Scipio Nasica, alleged to
have been the holder of a huge amount of public land. The commission
needed surveyors and transport-animals, and there was also precedent
for giving cash to new settlers for their initial expenses.*5 At this point
the windfall of the legacy of the Pergamene kingdom (pp. 33-5 above)
allowed Tiberius to propose the seizure of money immediately available
from the royal treasury in order, it seems, to fund the distribution of
land. He declared, furthermore, that he would produce proposals about
the cities of the kingdom (which Attalus III had left free), presumably
with the aim of extracting revenue for Rome. This provoked attacks on
him in the Senate by Metellus Macedonicus and Q. Pompeius, in which
the former denounced him for associating with the poorest criminal
elements in the population and the latter suggested that the Pergamene
envoy, who had called on Ti. Gracchus, had given him the purple robe
and diadem from Pergamum as a future king. Thus Gracchus was
already being portrayed as morally decadent and an incipient tyrant.

It was against this background that he stood for re-election to the
tribunate. There was, according to Livy, an old law banning tenure of
the same magistracy twice within ten years, to which exceptions had
certainly been made allowing early second consulships. The most recent
precedent we know for successive tribunates was that of Licinius Stolo
and Sextius in the years of anarchy, which culminated in the opening of
the consulship to plebeians in 367, but this story may owe something to
late Republican historical elaboration. In 131 C. Carbo was to propose
unsuccessfully that the plebs could elect the same man tribune as often as
they wanted. If this bill had been passed, the resulting constitutional
position would have been far more extreme than that arising from the
single repeat of an annual magistracy, and it is hard to draw conclusions
from this about the legitimacy of Ti. Gracchus’ canvass. It should be
remembered that there was considerable flexibility in arguments based
on tradition at Rome. Recent tradition could be denounced as a
corruption of the correct behaviour of remote antiquity; alternatively
obedience to ancient precedents could be rejected as pedantic antiquaria-
nism in comparison with the realistic practices of the recent past.
Moreover, knowledge of the remote past depended on the biassed and
insecurely founded reconstructions of recent annalists. The chief argu-

Plut. Ti. Graceb. 13.2-3; Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.32; Livy xv.38.6-7; App. Syr. 1.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 69

ment that could be used in Gracchus’ defence was the accepted
independence of the plebian assembly in creating its own officials.

Gracchus is said to have hoped that repetition of his magistracy would
protect him from his enemies: he would remain sacrosanct and have the
opportunity to mobilize popular support on his behalf. He might have
argued in self-justification that his own survival in political life was the
best way to guarantee the execution of his legislation. On the other hand,
if there is any truth in the accounts of his new proposals, he was not
intending to stand pat on what he had done but to put more contro-
versial proposals to the plebs. According to Appian, as the election took
place at harvest-time, Gracchus’ rural supporters were unable to come
and help him and he therefore sought the support of the urban plebs.
This would have made new proposals especially desirable. A number of
ideas are atcributed to him, which mostly relate to what was proposed or
actually enacted by his brother Caius — reduction of military service,
appeal to assemblies from the sentences of judges, a mixture of knights
and senators on jury panels, even the promise of citizenship to Italian
allies. If these proposals were actually mentioned in his speeches and do
not merely derive from apocryphal ascription by his brother or later
sources, they suggest an attitude more aggressive than defensive, one
which sought to exploit the powers of the tribunate and assembly even
further.

There were early warnings of the violence that occurred at the
election. Plutarch claims that there were conspiracies among the. rich
from the time of the agrarian bill. The circumstances of the deposition of
Octavius would have sharpened feelings more. On the first day of the
election, after two tribes had voted for Ti. Gracchus, pressure was
brought on Rubrius, the presiding tribune, that Gracchus should not be
accepted as a candidate. Rubrius withdrew and was replaced by Mum-
mius, the man chosen as tribune instead of Octavius. That evening
Gracchus put on mourning and commended the safety of his own son
and mother to his supporters. Before dawn the following day he and his
men occupied the slopes of the Capitoline hill and the centre of the
Forum in preparation for the assembly. His opponents forced their way
in and tried to impede the election but, according to Appian, they were
driven out of the Forum with sticks and clubs. Meanwhile a Senate
meeting was held in the temple of Fides (by the stairway up the western
cliff of the Capitol) to discuss Gracchus’ imminent re-election. The
presiding consul, P. Mucius Scaevola, was urged by Scipio Nasica to
defend the public interest and kill the tyrant (a gesture by Gracchus in the
assembly was interpreted as a request for a diadem), but he refused to use
force or kill a citizen without trial. Nasica then claimed that the consul
was betraying the Roman constitution and used the formula of a

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoisTp] osprquiey

sauoidiog ayj jo quiqyt

We
WX

SMOG,

“a
<P

tiny
<=.
Arg us
PAN nto”

eueluowjae 7
810g

PTE

SSSA
- eueymanbsano
WM, e104
vuiy, Re
%, \ %
Moy w
HW

Af
My
‘Ny

snj}

Pugs
TS
euspinbsz

suempes

syeuiuino
e104

anit
2uI1j09 ww
2230, NS

>
YNVLN3WON VIA VINV IVS VIA

antl

Wy
%
%
=.
A\
5S

ion My

WOTNDINVS

Cnunplltte,

aly,

$0 OD1IOg
——-Pue aujBay sy

SNILYVW

SNdWV9

WONLNIYVEL

10381S
VY
UY

soudnr ay;
Y

“nanny

VIVA

JINILVIUVd

WANVWOY
WAYOd

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSpquivey © sUTTUGC sovoisTp] osprquie;
‘syqnday ayi jo saizn1us> om ase] ay UI awoY “1 “314

8NS SNOd

SIINDJEH
ewixey GY

J0191A SBINDIBY O

|
wnivvoe8

wnuyod

ty
i
4

wWINHOWOH wunso4
so SejdweL

eimeyso1ew
Pue eunyo4 Be

s a atl”
ve
seply

SNWIXeW sNWwido
sayidne

a) .

euidgeaseg

SAINIWYV 14
snoduig Snioigsw4

syeluawsey SNOd
8140

euojjeg

Aedwod
jo 091104
r pue 93380

eunuebsy o61e7
4

|
|
j0 sajdwe] sn03|
:

syjeunuos

a10g . .

72 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

magistrate levying soldiers in an emergency: ‘anyone who wants the
community secure, follow me’. He also put the hem of his toga on his
head, imitating the so-called cinctus Gabinus used by consuls in such
circumstances and by priests when sacrificing. In this garb he headed a
crowd of senators and their attendants who mounted to the high point of
the area Capitolina outside the temple of Jupiter. Here they came to grips
with Gracchus and his supporters and, after clubbing many to death or
throwing them down the precipice of the hill, they routed the rest.
Gracchus himself was said to have been struck down by two men, one of
whom was his fellow-tribune P. Satureius. The fine head of the Athenian
tyrant-slayer Aristogeiton, found at the bottom of the south-west slope
of the Capitol, may well be part of a monument set up later to
commemorate the alleged imitation of the Athenian example.‘

Although our ancient sources differ in assigning responsibility for the
original violence in the final electoral assembly, they assume that those
who struck down Gracchus did so deliberately, whether this was a
deplorable criminal act or a glorious blow for liberty. A plausible
attempt has been made recently to show that after the gradual escalation
of violence during the tribunate, passions ran too high on the final
election day and the death of Gracchus was its unpremeditated outcome.
Yet, however plausible, this runs directly contrary to the language used
in the Senate and the attitude it implied. It was axiomatic among the
Roman upper class that potential tyrants should be killed out of hand.
The historical origins of this belief lay in the expulsion of the Kings and
the deaths (by execution or assassination) of the three demagogues who
were alleged to have aspired to tyranny in the early Republic — Sp.
Cassius, Sp. Maelius and M. Manlius Capitolinus. These examples would
have been reinforced in the minds of the educated by horror stories
about Greek tyrants who had begun as demagogues, such as Dionysius
and Agathocles of Syracuse. Nasica appealed to this tradition of
tyrannicide and then made in effect a declaration of war by using the
formula of the emergency military levy. From his point of view he had
good grounds for his action. Even if Gracchus’ first moves had been
those of a reformer within Roman tradition, his ruthless assertion of
popular sovereignty in all crises gave his tribunate an ideological
dimension, the more disturbing because it was combined with a desire to
continue his own pre-eminence. This was a capital crime for those who
believed that justice lay in the collective dominance of the Senate and of
men of property.

The Senate’s behaviour in the aftermath of Gracchus’ death, however
self-contradictory it appears, in every respect confirms the view that the
killing of Gracchus was a deliberate act. The consul P. Scaevola is said by

6 Lintott 1968 (A 62) 183; Coarelli 1969 (c 43).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 74

Cicero to have given ex post facto approval to the deed by virtue of the
decrees which were then passed. The consuls of 132 were instructed to
investigate and execute those who had conspired with Gracchus (C.
Blossius of Cumae, a Stoic philosopher, was among those investigated
and released but the rhetor Diophanes was not so lucky). When Scipio
Aemilianus returned from his victory at Numantia, he was asked at a
public meeting whether the killing was justified and replied that it was, if
indeed Gracchus had planned to seize a tyranny. Earlier at Numantia he
had quoted Homer, ‘so I would have perish anyone who does such
things’. However, Nasica himself was challenged in the Senate to defend
his conduct with a wager (the same procedure that had been used against
Gracchus by Annius) and, like Gracchus, he refused, rejecting Scaevola
as an arbiter. Then, although pontifex maximus, he was sent as an
ambassador to Pergamum, where he died.

Meanwhile the vacancy on the land commission was filled by the
election of Crassus Mucianus (Scaevola’s brother and C. Gracchus’
father-in-law) and its work was allowed to go forward. It is unlikely that
this was merely a sop to public feeling: rather it reflected the amount of
support that the Lex Sempronia had in principle among the Senate,
provided, no doubt, that the commissioners were thought to be sound
men who would handle existing possessors of public land with care.
Those who regarded its operations as fundamentally unjust would have
remained disquieted. Scipio Aemilianus made a speech denouncing what
is probably Gracchus’ law earmarking funds from Asia for this work. In
this he seems to have compared the financial exploitation of Asia with the
importation of Asiatic luxury and sexual licence. There is an irony here,
since Scipio had maintained good relations with Attalus III and had
received presents of war-supplies from him at Numantia.‘? Boundary
stones (fermini) set up by the commissioners of 132 have been found in
Campania, northern Lucania and in the ager Gallicus near Fanum, while
those of the succeeding commission have appeared in southern Sam-
nium near the Campanian border and recently in northern Apulia near
Luceria. A tantalizing sidelight on their operations is the monument in
the Val di Diano, which commemorates the achievements of a man who
built a road from Rhegium to Capua, returned runaway slaves at the end
of the Sicilian slave revolt (ch. 2, pp. 25-7) and, as he claimed, was the
first to make herdsmen yield place to arable farmers on the public land.
Although he is generally held to be Popillius Laenas, the consul of 132, a
strong case has been made for identification with T. Annius, praetor ¢.
132, one of whose milestones has been found elsewhere on this road.
This monument at the entrance to Lucania is in an area of centuriation
near the find-spots of Gracchan ¢ermini. It seems that the man who

“ ORF no. 21, fr. 30; Cic. Deior. 19.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

74 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

commemorated himself was competing with the land commission for
glory as the saviour of rural Italy.*8

We have no clear evidence of the success or failure of the commis-
sion’s resettlement programme. Appian’s gloom over the fate of the
poor, when its operations finally ceased, is no argument against the
viability of the original allotments. The increase recorded in the census
figures between 131 and 125 of some 75,000 adult males is in the writer’s
view best explained by new registrations (ch. 2, pp. 36-7) and is
testimony to the initial attractiveness of the land-grants. Moreover,
although our sources from the Principate tend to anticipate the concent-
ration of property which had occurred by the first century A.D., there is
plenty of evidence for the survival of smallholdings in this period (pp.
56-7). Indeed this is implicit in the law of 111, whose legislator thought
it worthwhile to confirm new allotments as private property and to
encourage the formation of 30-éagera private holdings in the future
through the occupation and cultivation of public land.

The major difficulties faced by the commission were those of discrimi-
nating between existing public and private land and of handling non-
Roman occupiers of public land. Complaints came from the wealthy
possessors about the lots which were eventually adjudged theirs, but
jurisdiction in disputes lay in the hands of the commission. Italian
landowners objected to this jurisdiction and in 130-129 found a
champion in Scipio Aemilianus. Scipio secured by a decree of the Senate
the transfer of jurisdiction in such cases to the consul, but the latter left
for his province. We do not know what happened in the long run.
Jurisdiction in matters arising from land distribution was assigned to
any consul or praetor by the law of 111 and it may be that subsequent
consuls heard the allies’ cases. There is certainly no reason to suppose
that the commission ceased to be active in other respects in spite of the
understandable obstruction by possessors.

Shortly after this intervention Scipio died mysteriously at night.
Although this seems to have been ascribed to natural causes in the
funeral oration, his wife (who was Ti. Gracchus’ sister), C. Carbo and C.
Gracchus were all suspected of murdering him. This bears witness to his
identification with the opposition to Ti. Gracchus and his political
programme. Cicero’s statement that the death of Ti. Gracchus divided
the people into two halves is an over-simplification. Scipio had oppo-
nents in the Senate like Metellus Macedonicus, who probably had
sympathy with the aims of Gracchan legislation (as censor in 131 he had
spoken in favour of increasing the birth-rate) but none with his political
methods. There were also opponents such as C. Carbo and C. Gracchus
who, following the example of Ti. Gracchus, wanted to use the

“8 ILLRP 467-74; 454; 454; Pani 1977 (B 216); Wiseman 1964 (B 259); 1969 (B 260).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 75

assemblies under their own leadership to direct political policy. This
attitude is illustrated by Carbo’s successful bill requiring secret ballot in
legislative assemblies and his unsuccessful bill, which was supported by
C. Gracchus, that unlimited re-election to the tribunate should be
allowed. If there was a consensus in practice about the agrarian problem,
the way had been opened to future conflict about the balance of the
constitution. A further proposal, which should be mentioned in this
context, is one for the return of public horses mentioned by Cicero in De
Republica. Scholars since the last century have assumed that the object of
this proposal was to deprive senators of horses subsidized by the treasury
and of membership of the centuries of knights in the comitia centuriata,
but this is not stated in the text, nor is there confirmatory evidence
elsewhere.*? It seems more likely to be a proposal for the abolition of the
public horse entirely, on the ground that there was no longer military
justification for their existence, since Rome had come to depend on
foreign cavalry. The bill would have abolished a class distinction, as
Cicero complains, and also have saved the treasury money spent on
payment for animals and fodder. Thus Cicero could suggest that the
bill’s authors were seeking a /argitio, ahhand-out of welfare for the people,
from the money saved.

Meanwhile a spur to further radical reforms was provided by the
exacerbation of some of Rome’s long-standing difficulties. The Grac-
chan agrarian policy had already brought to the surface the problem of
Rome’s relations with her Italian allies (on which see Volume vir, pp.
207-43). Fulvius Flaccus, one of the land commissioners, sought, when
consul in 125, to remove the objections of the Italian upper classes to the
redistribution of land by offering Roman citizenship to allies or, if they
did not wish to lose their separate identities, physical protection against
Roman magistrates in the form of provocatio — something which would
have been especially desirable in view of the horrific stories about the
behaviour of Romans in Italy, which were recounted by Cato the Censor
and later by C. Gracchus in their speeches. The /ex de repetundis on the
‘Tabula Bembina’ from Urbino (lines 78-9) made the same alternative
offers to successful non-Roman prosecutors, but it seems to have
excluded giving provocatio to magistrates in allied communities (it is not
stated that these were only Latin, as Mommsen suggested). This has been
linked with the possession of Roman citizenship by magistrates in
Latin cities, attested as existing before the Social War of 90 B.c.
However, if these men were already Roman citizens, this clause was
irrelevant to them from the start. Nor is it certain that the allied
magistrates were excluded from receiving provocatio because they pos-
sessed it already. As Gabba has argued in Vol. vir? (pp. 241—2), the

49 Cic. Rep. tv.2; Mommsen 1887-8 (a 77) 111.505-6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

76 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

legislator may have been reluctant to confer on the local magistrates the
freedom from public duties which was a concomitant of the provocatio
privilege. It is none the less conceivable that the concession of Roman
citizenship to Latin magistrates was already effective in 123-122.
However, the wholesale grant of Roman citizenship and provocatio
proposed by Flaccus was a different matter. It is important to realize that
if a community decided to assume the Roman citizenship, it lost its
separate juridical identity and there was no way that an individual
member could retain his old status as a foreigner combined with
provocatio. The decision to choose provocatio rather than citizenship in
response to Flaccus’ offer would have had to be made by the community
as a whole.

In 126, the year before Flaccus’ consulship, a law of M. Iunius Pennus
had excluded non-Romans from the city, either because there was a
threat to public order from Italians gathering in the city to support
Flaccus at the elections, or because it was suspected that Roman
citizenship was being usurped. This measure cannot have lasted long.
Nevertheless, Flaccus made no progress with his proposal before he left
for his war against the Gauls (p. 24 above). It is tempting to connect
with his failure the revolt in this year of Fregellae, a Latin colony on the
border of Samnium, and, according to one source, the simultaneous
revolt of Asculum, the Picene capital. Fregellae had been in 177 the focus
for migration of Samnites and Paelignians. Excavation has revealed an
apparently prosperous town with developed private architecture and
drainage, flanked by a popular shrine dedicated to Aesculapius with an
altar to Salus (Health), which specialized in curing diseases of the foot.
There is, however, no evidence of spectacular monuments, such as the
contemporary theatre and shrines of Samnite Pietrabbondante. We have
no information about the cause of the revolt, and it may have been a
response to harsh intervention by the Senate or Roman magistrates in a
matter which concerned Fregellae alone. In the event Q. Numitorius
Pullus betrayed his own city and it was conquered and flattened by L.
Opimius, then praetor, much as Carthage had been, to the distress of the
other Latins.5°

The supply of grain to Italy had already been a problem in the pre-
vious decade (pp. 58, 60). When C. Gracchus was quaestor in Sardinia in
126, grain for his army was provided by-king Micipsa of Numidia, which
is remarkable in what was normally a grain-exporting province. The
following year there was a plague of locusts in Africa. In the words of the
poet Lucan later, ‘a starving people knows not how to fear’. Apart from
the misery that ensued from corn shortages for the poor, the possibility

50 Livy xut.8.8; De Vir. I//. 65.1; Cic. Inv. Rhet. 1.105; Fit. v.62; Crawford, Keppie, Patterson and
Vercnocke 1984 (B 284).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GAIUS GRACCHUS 77

of riots was disturbing to the aristocracy.5! Another cause for disquiet
was the fact that the prognostications of the moralists about the results of
the destruction of Carthage were being proved true, not only by luxury
at Rome (there was yet another sumptuary law, a Lex Licinia, in 131 or
later) but by the conduct of senators in Italy and the provinces. Wealth
was still on a small scale by comparison with the late Republic, if we
believe the story that Aemilius Lepidus was charged before the censors
in 125-124 for renting a house for 6,000 sestertii a year. So probably was
extortion. Yet after the introduction in 149 of a permanent tribunal to
investigate illegal appropriations by Romans in authority to the detri-
ment of allies, the guaestio de repetundis, in all the cases known to us the
accused went free (a partial exception was M. Iunius Silanus, who
committed suicide after being condemned by his father in a private
family hearing). In particular the activities of M’. Aquillius, who had
been made responsible for settling the new province of Asia after the war
with Aristonicus (ch. 2. pp. 34-5) became a scandal, yet he was acquitted
after his return in 126.

Vv. GAIUS GRACCHUS

While quaestor in Sardinia from 126 to 124 C. Gracchus tried to distance
himself conspicuously from current trends in profiteering. Micipsa’s gift
of grain also added to his political stature. He returned to Rome early in
124 without apparently waiting for his replacement (he could have
argued that he had been forced to neglect his other office of land
commissioner for too long) and immediately had to defend himself
against charges of misconduct on this count and complicity in the revolt
of Fregellae. Canvass for the tribunate brought him election in fourth
place. He was a less appealing man than his brother, but his powerful
oratory and flamboyant deportment on the platform were later regarded
as the beginning of a new era in demagoguery. Once elected, he revived
memories of the catastrophe of Tiberius and his supporters, not only as a
personal misfortune but as a failure by the plebeians to maintain their
tradition of defending their tribunes. He proposed two bills with an
element of reprisal. The first, banning from future office any magistrate
deposed by the people and so threatening M. Octavius, was perhaps
withdrawn (or a prosecution of Octavius for flouting the law was not
pressed), allegedly after representations from Gracchus’ mother Corne-
lia. The second was generally a reinforcement of the provocatio legisla-
tion, which sought to prevent proceedings like those under Popillius
Laenas’ tribunal in 132: no capital trial of a citizen was to be held without
the sanction of the assembly; furthermore any magistrate who deprived a

531 Plut. C. Graceh. 2.5 (cf. Livy xxxvi.2.13); Oros. v.11.2-5; Lucan 111.58.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

78 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

man of his citizen rights without trial, that is by execution or exile, as if he
were an enemy, was himself to be tried before the people. Subsequently
Gracchus prosecuted Popillius Laenas on this count and drove him into
exile.52

The flood of new legislation which followed, although it was within
existing popularis tradition in so far as its ultimate concern was the
welfare of the people (commoda populi), created new precedents both in
the sheer quantity and in the radical nature of the proposals. Our sources
tend to conceive Gracchus’ legislation as an elaborate plot against the
authority of the Senate, and there is truth in this inasmuch as he was
subjecting magistrates and senators to new controls. Yet he showed no
sign of wanting to replace the Senate in its normal functions and it is
surely a distortion to see his measures merely as instrumental, designed
to create sufficient public favour for him to achieve this further end. It is
equally unsound to treat his earlier measures as justifiable exercises in
demagoguery on the ground that they were intended to prepare the
ground for the enfranchisement of the Italians. The measures were
important individually as attempts to solve political problems, but also
collectively, because the means chosen often recalled the procedures of
Greek democracy and the total effect was to use popular sovereignty to
create an administration in the popular interest. The chronology of the
legislation is impossible to reconstruct with certainty, except in so fat as
both the /ex de repetundis and the Italian proposal probably belong to 122.
The following treatment is therefore more schematic than sequential.53

Gracchus developed his brother’s agrarian land legislation in a new
bill which exempted an important section of public land from distribu-
tion — perhaps so that it could be rented by non-Romans — and which
imposed a rent on new allotments, thus emphasizing that they were still
public land. Linked with this and perhaps incorporated in it were
schemes for colonies in Italy (Scyllacium, Tarentum and Capua are sites
mentioned) and for the building of roads. The latter, apart from their
obvious functions, would have contributed to the success of farmers on
allotments deep in the countryside and to the growth of vici, villages
where houses were assigned to those who maintained the roads.54
Through a fellow-tribune named Rubrius he also enacted that some of
the land Rome owned in North Africa should be used to settle a colony
with a refounded Carthage (Iunonia) as its centre and generous allot-
ments of up to 200 éagera — clearly a colony provided with an upper class
from the start (ch. 2, p. 28).

To improve the corn supply he introduced a measure which by virtue

52 Lintott 1968 (A 62) 163-4.

53 On ancient views of C. Gracchus see Nicolet 1983 (c 116). On chronology Stockton 1979 (c
137) 226-39. 54 Lex agraria (Bruns no. 11), lines 11-12.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GAIUS GRACCHUS 79

of its intended permanence went beyond those of which we know in the
Greek world. Corn was to be sold to citizens at a price of 64 asses a modius
(see above, p. 58), thus probably a little below the price fetched by wheat
immediately after the harvest. This was made possible by the building of
granaries at Rome where corn could be kept the year round after being
bought when the price was low. By contrast, when he believed that corn
had been improperly exacted by a praetor in Spain for despatch to Rome,
he had the price of the corn sent back to the Spanish cities through a
decree of the Senate. It is also possible that he proposed a limit on debt
repayments as a further means of assisting the poor.*

It appears from an anecdote about L. Piso Frugi that the grain law was
opposed because it shared out the property not of individuals but of the
community as a whole: thus it was believed not unjust, as the agrarian
bill of 133 had been, but rather recklessly prodigal. However, Gaius
showed his concern with the revenues needed to pay for his operations
by the introduction of new transit-dues and more significantly in the
organization of the province of Asia. We know he spoke against a bill
which would have confirmed the gift by Aquillius of part of Phrygia to
Mithridates, claiming to do so in the name of the treasury and public
welfare (chapter 2, p. 35). He himself passed what was probably a
substitute bill about the administration of Asia, which included a new
arrangement for collecting the direct taxes. These were to be farmed out
to a company of tax-collectors (societas publicanorum) after an auction at
Rome, and its representatives would collect the money in the province
instead of the Roman magistrates. The societates had as their core a
contractor (manceps) and partners (socii), who were non-senators, but
these were backed by a number of guarantors and shareholders, among
whom senators might have been found. The companies were unusual in
being the only form of business association to which Roman law
permitted a legal personality something like that of amodern company.%
The Asian direct taxes would have been the plum contract for such
companies and this probably had implications from the start throughout
business circles in Rome, as it clearly did later in Cicero’s day. Gaius’ bill,
therefore, affected the interests not only of the treasury and the common
people who received benefits from it, but also of the moneyed classes,
and the tax companies became the centres of important political
pressure-groups.

A number of other constitutional and administrative reforms are
briefly treated in our sources. By a law which was to remain valid down
to 52 B.c. the Senate was required to settle the consular provinces before
the election of the consuls concerned (in this epoch the elections were
shortly before the end of the consular year). This would have diminished

55 Brunt 1971 (A 17) 90. 56 Badian 1972 (A 4) 67-81. Nicolet 1971 (G 173); 1979 (G 175).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

80 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

jobbery in the allocation, although occasionally, when a new military
crisis arose, these provinces had to be changed — a procedure for which
the law seems to have allowed. A proposal was made to mix centuries
from different classes of the comitia centuriata, when allotting the order in
which their returns of votes were to be made: this would not have
affected greatly the fundamental bias towards the wealthy in the
assembly, but would have ensured that, when there were three or four
candidates with similar numerical support, the chances of those who
drew their support from the poorer citizens would not be prejudiced.
The cynic might say that Gaius was providing for his own future. We
have no evidence that this bill was in fact passed. Terms of military
service were also altered: no soldier less than seventeen years old was to
be conscripted and there were to be no deductions from pay for clothing
and equipment supplied. It is not stated, however, that C. Gracchus had
reduced the period of compulsory military service, although this seems
to have occurred by 109 B.c..

There are more complex problems about Gaius’ policy of eliminating
corruption and the dominance of the aristocracy in the courts. The Lex
Sempronia about capital trials, discussed earlier (pp. 77-8), should not
be forgotten in this context: it was to be a positive stimulus towards the
establishment by legislation of permanent criminal courts as well as
special tribunals. A measure, later incorporated in the Lex Cornelia de
sicariis et veneficis (which dealt with banditry, poisoning and murder)
provided that those who conspired to secure the condemnation of a
person on a capital charge should themselves be liable to a capital
prosecution. This does not seem to be a reaction to Popillius’ tribunal of
132 but rather to misconduct in regular courts, such as that attested in
141, when Hostilius Tubulus, who had presided as praetor over an
investigation into bandits, was accused of judicial corruption and a
tribunal was set up through a bill passed by P. Scaevola, later the
associate of Tiberius Gracchus.5’? However, the feature of Gaius’
legislation that the majority of our ancient sources choose to emphasize,
usually with hostile overtones, is his transfer of judicial competence to
the equestrian order (pp. 90-91), which is said to have set them at odds
with the Senate and cut down the Senate’s power. Most of the accounts
do not explain the measure in detail; Livy mentions a proposal to add 600
from the equestrian order to the Senate, Plutarch one to add 300
equestrians to the Senate, adding that the resulting 600 were to share all
judicial duties. There is no evidence of an enlarged Senate later, but it is
possible that we have here garbled evidence of a genuine reform, by
which non-senators were generally admitted to judicial functions, which
previously, according to Polybius, were monopolized by the Senate.*8

57 Cic. Fin. 11.54; 1v.77; Nat. D. 111.74; Ewins 1960 (F 47).
58 Livy Per. cx; Plut. C. Gracch. 5.2—4; Polyb. v1.17.7; Brunt 1988 (a 19) 194-204.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GAIUS GRACCHUS 81

The clearest evidence of the nature of the reform that excited our
literary authorities is provided by the fragments of a /ex de repetundis (ch.
1, p- 5), which, though they contain no direct testimony to their author,
can be shown to have belonged to Gaius’ legislation.5? This law not only
prescribed the selection of jurors who had not been senators or minor
magistrates, but inaugurated a new era of criminal procedure. It allowed
Rome’s allies, either in person or through delegated representatives, to
prosecute Roman ex-magistrates, senators or their sons for the improper
seizure of property. The jurors were to be fifty in number extracted by
selection and rejection from an album of 450 men with no connexion
with the Senate or the magistrates. Procedure was elaborately detailed
and disobedience by members of the court was punished by fines.
Successful prosecutors were also rewarded with citizenship or other
privileges — provocatio and immunity from both conscription and public
duties in their own communities (pp. 75-6). The political aspect of the
law was not merely the granting of public duties as jurors to equestrians,
but the granting of judicial power in cases where senators and their like
were the defendants and the prosecution derived from embittered allies
and subjects of Rome. This law in itself would explain the vaguer
statements in our literary sources. The proposals mentioned by Livy and
Plutarch, which brought together senators and equestrians, may have
been Gaius’ initial plans later abandoned or some more general
measures affecting judges in other cases. According to Diodorus, who
follows Posidonius, Gracchus regarded this judicial legislation as a
sword threatening the Senate, and Cicero claims that Gracchus talked of
throwing daggers into the Forum for citizens to fight duels. We should
not suppose from this that he planned to destroy the Senate but simply to
break its monopoly of political influence. At the same time he sought to
toughen public criminal procedure which in the past had been lenient to
senatorial malefactors guilty of brutality and extortion in the empire. For
prosecutions in the assembly and the creation of special tribunals by
legislation might founder through obstruction by a tribune friendly to
the defendant or appeals to the sympathy of the crowd, while the quasi-
private procedure under the Lex Calpurnia de repetundis both was
unsuited to complex cases and led merely to restitution for what had
been lost, unlike the new law which provided that the damages should be
double what had been taken.

It is a commonplace among modern authorities that the ensuing
equestrian juries were venal and vindictive. This view is chiefly based on
the case of P. Rutilius Rufus, condemned ¢. 92 B.c. after making the tax-
collectors of Asia his enemies. However, it is worth noticing that
Rutilius was condemned for receiving bribes (presumably from provin-

59 Sherwin-White 1972 (B 240); 1982 (C 133); Lintott 1981 (a 64) 177-85.
60 Cic. Leg. 11.20; Diod. xxxvit.g.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

82 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

cials), which was by then actionable under the /ex de repetundis, and there
is nothing to show that he was not technically guilty on that count. In
general in this court the prosecution had to originate from complaints by
allies. The statistics of repetundae cases from the time of Gaius’ legislation
onwards show that about 50 per cent of all prosecutions succeeded.®!
Although an improvement from the point of view of Rome’s allies on
what happened before, this was not an outstanding success rate. Yet the
senatorial grievance against the jurors in this period was that they
condemned, not that they acquitted unjustly. A fairer conclusion might
be that the personal animus of jurors against senators on trial did no
more than counterbalance the tendency of other jurors to acquit those
with whom they had business and social connexions.

The passing of the /ex de repetundis probably belongs to the beginning
of Gaius’ second tribunate, since the text of the inscription shows that
the law was passed near the beginning of the calendar year. Gaius had
achieved re-election in the midst of his legislation in circumstances
which are far from clear. He did not canvass but, according to Plutarch,
was chosen spontaneously by the tribes themselves and the presiding
magistrate ratified his election. Arguably, this re-election did not suit his
plans, since he was required in Africa to supervise the founding of the
new colony at Carthage during 122. His colleague in the agrarian
commission, Fulvius Flaccus, was also elected tribune, while a friend, C.
Fannius, became consul. One other major bill was proposed by him (or
by Flaccus with his support) this year — to improve the civil rights of
Latins and Italians. It is evident from our sources that the Latins were
offered full Roman citizenship, but other Italians were not. The latter are
said to have been offered the right to vote. Modern scholars have
assumed that this is a roundabout description of a grant of Latin status
(which did include the right of all Latins present at an election to vote in
one of the thirty-five tribes). However, the most important features of
Latin status were the private rights of intermarriage, access to Roman
courts on the same terms as Romans and acquisition of land and other
major items of property owned by Romans.*®2 Nor should we forget the
religious cults which Rome shared with Latium. By virtue of these
privileges Latins had become more assimilated to Romans than they had
been by the suffrage and it would be odd if our sources had missed the
point. It may be suggested, therefore, against current orthodoxy that
what Gaius offered Italians was merely some form of voting rights in
elections and legislation, which they could enjoy if present at Rome at
the time. Gaius’ proposal was, consequently, modest in that it sought

61 Lintott 1981 (F 104) 19475, 209-12.

62 App. BCiv. 1.23.99; Plut. C. Gracch. 5.2; 8.3; ORF no. 32, fr. 1. On Latin rights see Sherwin-
White 1973 (F 141) 108-16; on Gracchus’ re-election see Stockton 1979 (C 137) 169ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GAIUS GRACCHUS 83

only to absorb in the Roman citizen body those already closely linked by
language, law and religion.

There was, however, strong opposition to the bill, in which two
leading figures are named. One was the consul Fannius, who had been
expected to be Gaius’ supporter. The one surviving fragment of his
famous speech on the subject runs, ‘I suppose you imagine that, if you
give citizenship to the Latins, you will still have a place in the assembly in
which you are standing, and will participate in the games and festivals.
Don’t you realize that they will swamp everything?’ The other was M.
Livius Drusus, a fellow-tribune of Gaius, who is said to have sought to
rival him in popular favour at the prompting of the Senate — by
proposing twelve new colonies with 3,000 places each, the cancellation
of the rents on the new allotments and the grant of freedom from
flogging to Latins even on military service. Gaius’ tribunate was
apparently interrupted by his visit to the new colony in Africa, where the
foundation of the town was overcast by evil omens. (It is not clear how
he managed to justify his absence from the city, where as tribune he had a
duty to remain: it may even be that this was sanctioned by a senatus
consultum, which would have had the ulterior motive of removing him
temporarily from the political scene.) We do not know whether the bill
about the allies was abandoned, voted down or vetoed by Livius Drusus.
It still seems to have been an open issue at the time of the consular
elections, when Fannius expelled Latins and allies from Rome by an
edict. Interestingly, Gaius produced an edict in reply, promising to use
his protective powers as tribune of the plebs on behalf of those being
expelled, in spite of the fact that they were not members of the Roman
people, but in the event did not fulfil his promise. At all events the bill
became moribund and L. Opimius, an enemy of Gracchus and pre-
viously responsible for destroying Fregellae, was elected consul. Grac-
chus himself was not re-elected tribune, although it is said that he had a
majority of votes. This was probably because his votes were not
considered until after those of ten other candidates, who had already
been approved by a majority of the tribes.

During 121 there was an attempt to repeal parts of his legislation. It is
possible that modifications to his grain bill were proposed, but its repeal
by a M. Octavius Cn. f. seems to belong to the last decade of the century,
shortly before the law of Saturninus which revived the Gracchan
provisions. In 121 may also fall the first post-Gracchan land law, which
allowed the sale of some landholdings within the ager publicus, though
not apparently new allotments, as most modern scholars believe (see
below, pp. 86-7). Above all, the Lex Rubria about Africa was the focus

63 Hall 1964 (F 74) at 295.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

84 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

of an attack by a tribune, Minucius, which Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus
prepared to resist by mobilizing supporters.

While Gracchus and his entourage were watching the critical
assembly from a newly built stoa on the Capitol, an attendant carrying
entrails from a sacrifice jeered at them and was stabbed to death with
styluses. The following day a meeting of the Senate was held, to which
Gracchus and Flaccus were summoned but which they did not attend,
fearing a repetition of the events of 133. The Senate then voted that
Opimius should defend the res publica and see that it came to no harm; he
was also urged to overthrow the tyrants. In reaction to this Flaccus and
Gracchus armed their followers and seized the shrine of Diana on the
Aventine hill. Opimius raised a militia from among the people of Rome,
stiffening it with a force of Cretan archers, who happened to be available
near the city. He declined to negotiate with his opponents, but ordered
them to submit themselves in person to the judgement of the Senate.
Then, after promising its weight in gold as a reward for Gracchus’ head,
he marched on the Aventine from the slope of the Velia. After a struggle
Flaccus and his sons were killed, while Gracchus was either killed or
committed suicide, when he had fled over the wooden Pons Sublicius to
the far bank of the Tiber. Opimius went on to hold an inquiry into the
supporters of C. Gracchus, similar to that of 132. Many were executed
after a brief investigation without the formalities of trial.

Opimius was later prosecuted before the people by a tribune, P.
Decius Subulo, on the ground that he had executed Roman citizens who
had not been legally condemned, that is, he had violated precisely
Gracchus’ Lex Sempronia, which had sought to prevent capital con-
demnations without the sanction of the people. Opimius’ whole conduct
in arming forces and bringing about the deaths of Gracchus and his
companions was brought into question in the case. He successfully
defended himself by appealing to the decree of the Senate which urged
him to save the state and by claiming that his opponents did not deserve
to be treated like Roman citizens. He was on better ground defending his
military measures than the killing of captured Romans in cold blood, and
so the broad-based attack of the prosecution may have been self-
defeating. The case was important because, by contrast with 133, the
deaths had not been the result of private violence — which, even if
excused in the light of Roman tradition, was not strictly a constitutional
precedent — but the calculated act of a magistrate who justified himself by
the trust placed in him by the Senate. Constitutionally, the Senate could
pass any decree it liked, it was the magistrate who was responsible for
any illegal actions he undertook. Nevertheless, the decree urging the

64 Stockton 1979 (Cc 137) 195ff; Lintott 1972 (F 102) 259ff. On the career of Fulvius Flaccus, who
tends to become overshadowed by C. Gracchus, Hall 1977 (¢ 72).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GAIUS GRACCHUS 85

defence of the public interest was valuable support, if he was charged
with breaking the laws. Opimius’ acquittal enabled the decree (usually
known to modern historians as the senatus consultum ultimum, following
an indignant phrase of Caesar’s) to become an institution for emergen-
cies, when the Senate believed that only the use of quasi-military force
against citizens would save the situation. From a purely theoretical point
of view there was much to be said for it. If there was violence and
disorder in the city, a magistrate was unlikely to suppress it without
breaching the personal immunities guaranteed by provocatio. However,
the decree was vague and could be treated by magistrates as carte blanche
for the most brutal reprisals. It was also clearly an instrument of class
politics both then and on later occasions, in that the victims were those
who had challenged the authority of the Senate by appealing to
assemblies.

Opimius’ escape from punishment for his breach of the Lex Sempro-
nia was complemented by the recall of Popillius Laenas from exile. The
Senate’s authority thus prevailed in the end, and the following period
was to be denounced, in a speech attributed by Sallust to C. Memmius,
the tribune of 111 B.C., as one in which the people were made a laughing-
stock by the arrogant few. On the other hand, the lesson that future
populares might derive from the fate of the Gracchi was not that
reverence for law and order was essential, but that they needed superior
force and especially the support of magistrates with imperium. This was
one respect in which the Gracchi influenced their successors from
Saturninus to Clodius and the implications for the aristocracy were
uncomfortable. It may be asked whether it was worthwhile for the
Senate to purchase its renewed dominance at this price, especially as it
could not erase what Gaius had done. It is true that the African bill was
repealed, but many Gracchan settlers were left in Africa and other
Romans were allowed to acquire territory by purchase there. Apart from
the evidence of the agrarian law of 111 B.C. (p. 87), there is a boundary-
stone of ¢. 120-119 from the territory of Carthage showing a new
agrarian commission, including C. Carbo, who had reneged on his
Gracchan affiliations by defending Opimius.6” The Gracchan land and
colony schemes in Italy were also modified and a bill about the Italians
and Latins was not to be reintroduced for thirty years. Yet most of C.
Gracchus’ bills passed into the corpus of Roman legislation, often with
far-reaching consequences. The aristocracy’s reaction resembled that of
a general dealing with a mutiny, who accedes to most of the demands but
executes the ringleaders to preserve discipline.

As for C. Gracchus himself, he was more resourceful politically than

65 Lintott 1968 (a 62) 149-74. 66 Sall. Jug. 31.2.
67 ILLRP 4735; Cic. De Or. 11.106, 165, 170.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

86 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

his brother but equally a man with a vision. Although the solutions he
advanced for current problems assumed the continuance of the existing
political framework, within this framework the balance of power was to
be changed. Both major and minor reforms were to be introduced by
legislation. He wanted senatorial administrators to be bound by rules
laid down by assemblies, to be liable to prosecution by their inferiors and
to condemnation by men from outside the senatorial milieu. It was
impossible for him to introduce Greek democracy to Rome but, just as
he recalled Greek demagogues in vaunting his incorruptible devotion to
the people,®* so he saw the people as the proper reference-point in the
management and exploitation of Rome’s ever-increasing imperial
resources.

VI. THE ARISTOCRACY AND MARIUS

The judgement that Sallust put in the mouth of Memmius was not
entirely fair. Apart from the survival of the majority of C. Gracchus’
enactments, tribunician activity did not cease when he died. C. Marius, a
man of equestrian family from Arpinum, who embarked on a senatorial
career after his military service, passed in his tribunate of 119 a lex
tabellaria, which sought to limit intimidation in voting assemblies by
making narrower the wooden galleries which led from the waiting-
enclosures to the voting-baskets. He is alleged by Plutarch also to have
taken a diametrically opposed attitude by obstructing a grain bill.
However, the probability is that any grain bill at this time was modifying
C. Gracchus’ provisions and that Plutarch has misunderstood an act
whose aim was to uphold the integrity of the existing generous grain
provision. The following year an important measure was carried in
defiance of senatorial authority, the law proposing the foundation of a
colony at Narbonne, which followed Gracchan precedent in creating a
colony overseas in a position which was also of commercial importance
(p. 24 above). It was vigorously supported by the young L. Licinius
Crassus, later Cicero’s mentor in oratory, who had also distinguished
himself for successfully prosecuting C. Carbo — perhaps de repetundis
under the procedure established by C. Gracchus. Another law which
gave vent to popular feeling was the Lex Peducaea of 114 which set upa
special tribunal to judge unchaste Vestal Virgins and their seducers, thus
replacing the jurisdiction of the pontifex maximus.

The agrarian arrangements in Italy were, however, modified. One bill
allowed the sale of land which had been granted from the public domain.
Appian understood this to apply to the smallholdings of the new

68 ORF no. 48, fr. 44.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ARISTOCRACY AND MARIUS 87

assignees, but the implication of the /ex agraria of 111 is that under the
earlier law only the established possessores were allowed this privilege.6?
Later the Lex Thoria put an end to the operations of the land
commission, allowing the retention of existing holdings of public land
by possessores, but only those, as appears from the law of 111, which did
not exceed the limit of the Leges Semproniae, and subjecting them to a
rent. The proceeds were to be used towards distributions, possibly to
provide initial finance for the new smallholders in Italy. The agrarian law
preserved on bronze (passed some time between 1 March and the harvest
of 111) abolished this rent for all legitimate possession of ager publicus by
citizens, which did not depend on a lease, and this land was now made
private.”0 Thus the status quo was formalized. Some land, nevertheless,
was to remain public, including land given to villagers who maintained
the roads, land leased out by the censors (including blocks granted to
Italian communities), drove-roads (ca//es) and pasture-land. It was also
provided that up to 30 éugera of public land could be made private by a
possessor who rendered it cultivable. However, the implication of the
law was that as much as could be done to redistribute Roman public land
in Italy had now been done. Henceforward new enterprises of this kind
were to take place abroad, as the sections of the law on Africa and
Corinth illustrate: in the former land is shown to be still available for
purchase or rent, in the latter surveying for centuriation was taking place
with a view to future assignments. Appian viewed this law as a betrayal
of the aims of the Gracchi. It may have seemed so to a writer in the early
Principate, when estates were vastly expanding and the number of
proprietors drastically contracting, but it does not follow that the new
smallholdings were unviable or immediately abandoned (pp. 56-7). The
pressure of the wealthy on the land was undeniable, but it seems more
likely that the power of capital only became rampant in the dislocation
which followed the social and civil wars in the decade 90-80 B.c.
Nevertheless, the decade following the death of C. Gracchus was
sufficiently reactionary to evoke the bitter ripostes against the nobility at
the time of the Jugurthine War. Indeed, it is this period above all which
prompted Sallust to declare Roman politics to be ruled by factio paucorum,
the established power of a small number of nobiles. The general truth of
this statement and its implications have been discussed earlier (pp. 48—
52), but it is appropriate here to mention a modern interpretation of the
period, which has evolved from it, namely the predominance of a
‘Metellan faction’.”! Between 123 and 109 the consulship was held by six

6 App. BCiv. 1.27.121; lex agr. 15-16 (no rights for buyers of new allotments before 111), cf. 16—
17 (purchase from old possessores recognized).

70 Badian 1964 (c 10); Gabba 1958 (B 40) 93-5; Johannsen 1971 (B 176).

1 Badian 1957 (c 6), followed above all by Gruen 1968 (c 68) 106-35.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

88 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

Caecilii Metelli, four sons of Q. Metellus Macedonicus (cos. 143) and
two sons of L. Metellus Calvus (cos. 142). In addition P. Scipio Nasica
(cos. 111) and M. Aemilius Scaurus (cos. 115 and now the princeps
senatus), regarded by Sallust as a key figure in the domination of the
nobility, were sons-in-law of Metelli. Other political associates have
been detected in those who were colleagues in consulships with Metelli
or were related to those who had been their colleagues, including L.
Aurelius Cotta (cos. 119) and Q. Servilius Caepio (cos. 106). One may
argue that this plethora of Metelli is a historical fluke caused by the
reproductive capacity of the previous generation and an unusually high
rate of survival of children. An already powerful family was thus bound
to bulk even larger both politically and socially among the aristocracy.
Yet this does not imply that the importance and the limitations of
kinship links as political moments had changed. On the other hand,
those who see family groupings as the driving forces in Roman politics
can simply argue that the ‘Metellan faction’ presents in a particularly
blatant form the kind of political association normally created by a much
more subtle and complex network of relationships. After the doubts
voiced earlier about explanations of politics in terms of a struggle
between family factions, it is only necessary here to consider how far the
concept of a ‘Metellan faction’ helps to elucidate the history of the post-
Gracchan epoch. If we accept that for ten years or so the major figures
were nobles hostile to Gracchan policies, whether these were consuls or
senior members of the Senate, it is certainly possible that the Metellan
family provided the political and social cement which made their
dominance more coherent. However, in my view it does not follow that
the Metelli themselves provided leadership or a political strategy, nor
that those connected with them retained political cohesion in the
following period, when traditional aristocratic politics were once again
challenged. Sallust in the Jugurtha (16.2) attributed Opimius’ influence in
the Senate to his crushing of C. Gracchus and the plebs, not to friendship
with Metelli.

The imperial aspects of the war with Jugurtha have been discussed
earlier (ch. 2, pp. 28-31). Initially Jugurtha’s bribes reinforced a not
unreasonable reluctance to get deeply involved in Numidia, but his
humiliation of Roman diplomacy and the potential threat he posed to the
province of Africa led to a volte-face in Roman policy. This change came
originally without any stimulus from popalaris tribunes, but from 111
onwards, when Jugurtha’s methods had become common knowledge, it
was easy for the tribunes to exploit the theme of senatorial incompetence
and corruption in a matter of national pride. C. Memmius, tribune in
111, passed a bill requiring a praetor, L. Cassius, to bring Jugurtha to
Rome for questioning — a plan which was in the end frustrated when

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ARISTOCRACY AND MARIUS 89

another tribune forbade him to give testimony. In 1roafter Jugurtha had
returned to Africa, there was further agitation by tribunes and two
sought to be re-elected. The following year the consul Metellus was
obstructed by tribunes, when he tried to take new forces to Africa after
Albinus’ defeat. Then C. Mamilius proposed that a special tribunal
(quaestio) should be established to investigate those who had advised
Jugurtha to disregard decrees of the Senate, who had received bribes,
who had handed back his elephants and deserters and had made formal
agreements about peace and war with enemies. The bill thus ostensibly
sought to protect both the authority of the Senate and the ultimate
discretion of the people in matters of peace and war. It threatened any
member of the various embassies to Numidia as well as L. Bestia and Sp.
Albinus, consuls in 111 and 110, together with their military advisers,
especially M. Scaurus.

We are told that the guilty men tried to block the bill by intrigue,
especially through Latins and allies.72 Sallust’s phraseology suggests that
tribunes or other magistrates were bribed or blackmailed to use a veto or
religious obstruction with allies acting as intermediaries. This, like the
appeal of Italian possessors of public land in 129, illustrates the
connexions which Italians had with the Roman aristocracy. In the event
Scaurus managed to be chosen one of the presidents of the tribunal, but
at least five eminent senators, including Bestia, Albinus and L. Opimius
were condemned. Those who served on the tribunals are said to have
been Gracchan judges, probably therefore taken from the album
established by C. Gracchus’ /ex de repetundis. The political attitudes of
wealthy men outside the senatorial order were becoming more
obviously important in these years. It would not have been surprising if
individuals of this standing had regularly an influence behind the scenes
in the previous hundred years, one which only came to the fore in crises,
such as the scandal of the fraudulent shippers in 212 or the argument
over state contracts in 169. Military failure was bad news for those
involved in finance and public contracts, even if their interests lay more
at home than overseas, since the collapse of financial confidence (fides)
was contagious. More particularly we know that Italian businessmen
had suffered through involvement with Adherbal in Numidia, others
were buying land in the African province, while Roman equites were
active in the Numidian campaign as ‘soldiers and businessmen’. It was
their support that C. Marius, then a subordinate officer of Metellus,
solicited in 108, when agitating against his commander’s conduct of the
war and seeking the consulship for himself.73

72 Sail. Ing. 40.3.
3 Livy xxv.3—q; xcrt.16, Sall. Iug. 21.2; 26.1; 65.4; Vell. Pat. tr.t1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

go 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

VII. MARIUS AND THE EQUITES

Before considering the implications of Marius’ career a brief digression
on the nature of the equestrian order, as it came to be understood
politically, is not out of place. Fundamentally, the eguites Romani were the
men chosen by the censors, who were assigned horses at public expense
with further allowances for fodder and who voted in eighteen special
centuries in the comitia centuriata. Many of these were young men who
would afterwards become senators, some were brothers or other close
relatives of senators, others had no connexion with the Senate. They
shared with senators the insignia of the gold ring. However, the term
equites seems also to have been applied by writers from Polybius onwards
to a far wider group who did military service on horseback. We hear of
an equestrian property qualification (census), perhaps of 400,000 sesterces
in the late Republic, whose possession did not automatically entail
equestrian status. It is also stated that this status was de facto hereditary.
Although it has been powerfully argued by Nicolet that the only proper
reference of the phrase equites Romani is to the members of the eighteen
centuries, the confused accounts of some of our sources suggest that in
the late Republic an ambiguity had crept in, and it seems that one reason
for that ambiguity was the application of the term eguifes to those non-
senators who sat in the courts and were frequently tax-contractors, when
their opposition to the Senate was being recounted.” If in the inscribed
lex de repetundis of C. Gracchus the now lost positive qualification of its
jurors was membership of the eguites Romani, there would have been no
ambiguity, but it is likely that this qualification was far more complex.
When, therefore, following our ancient sources, we refer to a conflict
between Senate and equites, we mean by the second term not the members
of the equestrian centuries but those wealthy non-senators, who may for
the most part have been members of the equestrian centuries but were
not necessarily so (they may have had strictly a different status, for
example that of ¢ribunus aerarii which involved a similar property
qualification). Those young eguites, who were mainly sons of senators
and would soon themselves become senators, should not be assumed to
have had an equestrian loyalty in politics.

Although our sources derive the breach between Senate and equites
from the judiciary legislation of C. Gracchus, the condemnations under
the Lex Mamilia and the election of Marius to his first consulship in 107
are the first clear evidence of equestrian hostility to senatorial administ-
ration in this period. Marius was not only a valuable instrument of this
reaction but he symbolized it. Of equestrian family by birth and a native
of Arpinum like the Cicerones, he might have been content with
municipal magistracies, military service and financial enterprise, perhaps

4 Nicolet 1966 (a 80); Henderson 1963 (c 76); Wiseman 1970 (A 131).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MARIUS AND THE EQUITES 91

in the service of the res publica. In fact one source alleges that he was
involved in tax contracts. He also had a long and distinguished military
career, including service under Scipio at Numantia, and became a
tribune of the soldiers. However, about the time of C. Gracchus’
ascendancy he embarked on politics at Rome, becoming quaestor,
tribune (p. 86) and then, after surviving charges of bribery, praetor. He
was regarded by Metellus in Numidia as under his patronage while on his
staff. He had connexions also with the Herennii, one of whom was
formally his patron, but it is not clear whence he had derived political
backing in his previous career. Marius’ success in reaching the consul-
ship cannot be entirely dissociated from previous connexions (even if
our sources say nothing about them in this context), but Sallust’s
insistence that it depended on a wide canvass, including farm workers
and labourers in the city, cannot be discounted, nor can the fact that he
was assisted by eguites who were businessmen.’5 The votes of the latter in
the equestrian centuries or the first class were vital and many must have
disregarded prior allegiances to vote for Marius. Their justification was
no doubt that in a crisis Rome needed the best man possible (the same
argument had worked in favour of Scipiones in the more recent past and
for new men like Fabricius Luscinus and Curius Dentatus in the almost
legendary era of the war against Pyrrhus (vol. vir’, pp. 412-13, 447-9)).
It is interesting that a Hortensius originally elected consul for 108 was
condemned while in office and a suffect consul replaced him. Marius on
the other hand was a man of old-fashioned severity and untainted by the
most recent senatorial corruption. Sallust treats the election of a new
man as an epoch-making blow against the nobility. In fact men with no
known consular or praetorian connexions who had reached the consul-
ship in the last twenty years were rare compared with those in other
periods but still some 15 per cent of the total. When such a man was
elected, this was regarded by his noble competitors as a personal
humiliation, but it would not have been taken by the nobility as a vote of
no confidence, in view of the ample precedents, unless the special
circumstances of the election strongly suggested this.76

Once elected, Marius was assigned Africa as his province by a
plebiscite which thus overruled the regular procedure laid down by C.
Gracchus. The assignation of Africa to Scipio Aemilianus in 147 was a
recent precedent for this (the appointment of Scipio Africanus to Spain
in 211 had by contrast been made after the Senate had ceded its discretion
to the assembly). In turn Marius’ appointment was the forerunner of a
series of major commands conferred by the people ending with the
fateful allocations to Caesar, Pompey and Crassus in the fifties. The
Senate allowed Marius to conscript, but he evaded the opposition that

3 Sall. lug. 65; 73; Carney 1962 (c 41); Passerini 1934 (C 117) 10-32.
76 Frequency of ‘new men’, Hopkins and Burton 1983 (A 54) 5f. Definition — Brunt 1982 (c 34).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

92 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

Metellus had encountered in 109 by only recruiting volunteers,
especially the time-served soldiers (evocat/), promising them victory and
booty. He also included in this levy the propertyless capite censi —a move
criticized by later historians, on the ground that it filled the army with
unprincipled men who were ideal material for aspirants to dictatorial
power. This judgement was easy to make when the Republic had been
destroyed, especially in the light of the period after Caesar’s murder,
when armies were bought and soldiers learnt to sell their services at the
highest price. However, Marius showed no sign of realizing the
potential for revolution in his action, nor may it have been apparent to
most of his contemporaries. Critics at the time are more likely to have
seized on the breach of a principle at the root of Roman society, one
which it shared with classical Greek cities, whereby the defence of the
community was entrusted normally to those with a considerable stake in
it through property. Similarly, their commitment to the defence of Rome
justified their dominance in the comitia centuriata which elected the
highest magistrates. Thus Marius would have been charged with levying
worthless men, who were more likely to damage Rome by desertion than
subversion.”

If Marius and his contemporaries were short-sighted, they are not
necessarily to be blamed. The proportion of propertyless men who were
in fact recruited cannot be determined. The Romans continued to levy
regularly by conscription rather than by asking for volunteers. The lure
of military service is not self-evident, when an ordinary soldier was paid
one denarius every three days, augmented, if he was lucky, by booty and
donatives at triumphs. It is true that Marius was the first commander
known to us to be closely connected with major distributions of land to
his ex-soldiers. Yet at this stage land assignment was a process which
required the co-operation of the Senate and other magistrates: it could
not be demanded from a general. In fact Roman armies were only to be
used for civil war after their scruples had been drowned in a blood-bath
of fighting with their own Italian allies, and the Roman soldiers who
served then were raised by wholesale conscription. It may as well be
argued that civil war created the self-seeking unprincipled soldier as the
converse.78

VIII. GENERALS AND TRIBUNES

While Marius was conducting his long campaign in Numidia, the story
elsewhere was the increasingly familiar one of defeat and corruption
followed by retribution in the courts at Rome. In 107, after the defeat of

77 Salil. Ing. 84.2—-5; 86.1-3; Plut. Mar. 9.1; Gell. NA xvi.10.11; Gabba 1976 (c $5) 16-33.
78 Brunt 1962 (C 30) 75-9; = 1988 (A 19) 257-65.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERALS AND TRIBUNES 93

L. Cassius by the Tigurini in Aquitania, C. Popillius saved the lives of the
remaining soldiers at the price of a humiliating agreement. Before he was
prosecuted on this count in an assembly, the tribune C. Coelius enacted
that secret ballot should be used in capital trials before the people and in
the event Popillius was condemned. (It should be remarked that
condemnation on a capital charge in an assembly was rare ~ the other
certain recent example was that of P. Popillius Laenas, charged by C.
Gracchus in 123.) The following year the consul Q. Servilius Caepio
passed a /ex de repetundis, which provided that the jurors should be drawn
from a mixed panel of senators and equifes. It is not clear whether this was
the first law of this kind since the work of C. Gracchus: this depends on
whether the Lex Acilia referred to by Cicero is to be taken as part of the
Gracchan legislation or a subsequent law. However, it seems clear that in
any case the basic principles of Gracchus had been preserved until 106,
Caepio’s law may also have introduced the procedure called divinatio,
whereby the jury selected the prosecutor from a number of applicants. L.
Crassus is said to have supported the proposal with an impassioned plea
to the people to save senators from the jaws of ravening beasts. This is
normally taken to refer to the equestrian jurors, but it may also apply to
the prosecutors, who were, as Cicero’s Brutus shows, becoming a
recognized class at this time.”

However, on 6 October the following year Caepio himself and
Mallius, consul of that year, shared responsibility for the disastrous
defeat by the Cimbri near Arausio (Orange) in the Rhéne valley, while
Caepio himself was alleged to have plundered gold from a sacred lake
near Tolosa (Toulouse) belonging to Roman allies. Caepio was deprived
of his iaperium — perhaps at the instance of the tribune C. Norbanus, if his
office began in December 105, as has been plausibly suggested. This
would then have been the occasion when two tribunes, who tried to veto
a bill of Norbanus, were driven by violence from the temple where the
proposer stood, and the princeps senatus, Scaurus, was struck by a stone —
the so-called seditio Norbana. Another tribune, L. Cassius, who was an
enemy of Caepio, passed a law expelling from the Senate any man
condemned in a trial before the people or deprived of his command by
them. A special tribunal was later set up to investigate the matter of the
gold taken from Toulouse. Caepio seems to have been condemned both
by this tribunal and by the assembly. Certainly, he was thrown into
prison because he had been condemned on a capital charge and only
released through the intervention of the tribune L. Reginus in 104 or
103. Meanwhile another active tribune of 104, Cn. Domitius, unsuccess-
fully tried to prosecute M. Silanus for his earlier defeat by the Cimbri in
109. (Silanus, we are told, had wronged a Gallic client who had been a

7 Lintott 1981 (F 104) 186-91.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

94 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

family friend of Domitius’ father, the conqueror of the Arverni.)
Domitius, however, did secure the adoption of a bill which put an end to
the co-option of the ordinary members of the colleges of priests,
substituting election by a minority (i.e. seventeen) of the tribes. He thus
evaded religious objections to election by the people en masse by a
sophism.®°

A further law which belongs to either 104 or 101 is the /ex de repetundis
of C. Servilius Glaucia. This not only restored to the equestrian order
their former monopoly of judging these cases, but introduced new
procedure and changed the scope of the law. Trials henceforth in this
court were compulsorily divided into two parts (a procedure called
comperendinatio) and the previous permission for adjournment, if more
than a third of the jury was undecided, was abolished. A supplementary
inquiry was instituted regarding money which had been passed on by the
condemned man to other people. Divinatio to select the prosecutor was
either retained or introduced (p. 93), and, probably for the first time, the
selected prosecutor was given time to search for evidence in the region
where the crimes had occurred (inguisitio). The financial penalty was
augmented hy loss of status. Moreover, the law began to take into
account the acceptance of freely given bribes as well as exactions under
physical or moral pressure. Although this very severe law made the
prosecution of misconduct by Roman magistrates more comprehensive
and effective, it was contrary to the spirit of C. Gracchus’ legislation, in
that through divinatio prosecutions would tend to be assigned to
Romans, rather than the injured allies, thus providing material for
aspiring politicians and the new breed of professional accusers. A
fragment of bronze from Tarentum containing complex provisions for
rewarding those who had contributed to a successful accusation and for
demanding an oath of obedience to the law, may preserve the final
section of Glaucia’s law.®!

Thus the political trend visible at the outset of the Jugurthine War
continued. Military humiliation and the misconduct of commanders
abroad rendered the aristocracy vulnerable to attacks by tribunes, and
their success in exploiting these weaknesses encouraged further popularis
activity. At the same time the German tribes, even though they had
retired north with their spoils in 105, posed a serious threat to Italy itself
and a further danger near home was presented by the new Sicilian slave
revolt in 104 (ch. 2, p. 26). The military situation was to give C. Marius
an even greater opportunity to advance his career, while popular unrest
stimulated tribunes not only to harass the aristocracy with a sort of
political guerilla warfare but to reassert the pre-eminence of the assembly
in a revival of politics according to the Gracchan model.

8 Ferrary 1979 (C 49) 92-101.
8! Lintote 1981 (F 104) 189~97; 1982 (B 191); Ferrary 1979 (C 49) 101-34.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERALS AND TRIBUNES 95

Thanks to the diplomacy of his legate Sulla, who persuaded king
Bocchus of Mauretania to surrender Jugurtha, Marius had been able to
complete his Numidian campaign by the time that the news of Arausio
reached Rome. He was then elected consul for the second time in his
absence. This may be simply ascribed to the wave of popular feeling that
simultaneously overwhelmed Caepio, but we cannot exclude the possibi-
lity that both in 105 and 104 the Senate acquiesced in the dispensation of
Marius from the law limiting re-election in order to placate the rest of the
people. After his first major victory over the Teutones and Ambrones in
102 his re-election was said to have been by common consent. Moreover,
there seem to have been no special political implications in his policy of
recruitment and military training in 104, such as there had been in 107.
Capite censi may well have been recruited, but this was the sort of crisis in
which restrictions on recruitment and exemptions from military service
were normally suspended — in Roman terminology a tumultus. In fact no
more than six Roman legions may have been used to fight the Germans
but these were supplemented by more than their equivalent in allies.82

Marius’ absence from Rome kept him aloof from the bitterness caused
by the prosecutions of 104. However, the following year he was
associated with a tribune, L. Appuleius Saturninus, who secured for him
the settlement of demobilized soldiers on land in Africa. When faced
with an attempt by his colleague Baebius to veto the bill, Saturninus
drove him away with a hail of stones, brutally cutting short any
argument about the proprieties of Baebius’ action. The principle of
settlement in the provinces was already firmly established and the
arguments used by Ti. Gracchus against Octavius (pp. 66-7) could have
been applied with equal force to Baebius. He in turn might have argued
that the allotments of 100 jagera were too generous (in spite of the
precedent set by the Lex Rubria) and would have cost the treasury the
rent or sale price which the land would otherwise have produced. In any
event the bill was implemented and the father of Julius Caesar, who was
Marius’ brother-in-law, was among the land commissioners. The
location of the settlements has been already discussed (ch. 2, p. 30).
Another agrarian bill of the period, proposed by L. Marcius Philippus,
was voted down — perhaps because it concerned Italy, where there were
by now vested interests even among the poor — but left its mark by virtue
of the comment by its proposer, that there were not 2,000 men at Rome
who really possessed property.®3

Saturninus joined in the harrying of incompetent magistrates. He not
only prosecuted Mallius and drove him into exile but, probably in his
first tribunate in 103, created a new permanent court to deal with those

82 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 430-1, 685.

83 Cic. Off. 11.73. On Saturninus, Glaucia and Marius see Badian 1958 (a 1) 198-210; Ferrary 1977
(c 49).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

96 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

who damaged the majesty of the Roman people (guaestio de maiestate).
This vague phrase came to cover a multitude of sins, and it is impossible
to be sure what the original legislator intended it to mean. It certainly
could be applied to the cases of treason or military incompetence by a
commander, such as had been recently prosecuted before assemblies. It is
also likely that it was aimed at tribunes or other magistrates, who
deliberately obstructed the people’s will — for example Octavius in 133
and more recently Baebius and the tribunes who had protected Caepio.
Ironically, it was later interpreted as a measure against tribunes who used
violence. For C. Norbanus was himself accused in this court in 95. The
jurors were equites and the procedure was probably modelled on that of
the quaestio de repetundis. It is possible that we have part of the text of this
law ona fragment of bronze from Bantia, but other identifications of the
fragment have been proposed.®

In 102 Saturninus supported a L. Equitius, when he claimed to be the
son of Ti. Gracchus at the censorship. The censor, Metellus Numidicus,
the man from whose patronage Marius had broken away, refused to
register Equitius where he wished (presumably in the rural tribe of the
Sempronii, as opposed to an urban tribe, where freedmen and other
humble men at Rome were enrolled). Metellus would have also expelled
Saturninus and Glaucia from the Senate, if his colleague Metellus
Caprarius had permitted this. One source tells of the censor being
blockaded on the Capitol and rescued by equites. This personal clash and
Saturninus’ dismissal from his quaestorian post by the Senate a few years
earlier are cited by our authorities as explanations for Saturninus’
embittered violence. Saturninus was certainly a more abrasive personal-
ity than the Gracchi, but his violence cannot be simply explained in these
terms. There is also an element of political calculation: he used force to
surmount swiftly hurdles which his political opponents thrust in his
path, assuming that fears of popular hostility would make his opponents
reluctant to risk military action in Rome and that Marius would in the
last resort support him.®

Marius’ army meanwhile defeated the Teutones and Ambrones near
the Roman fort of Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence). A more serious
invasion of the Cimbri through the Alpine passes was eventually repelled
the following year at Vercellae (Campi Raudii) in Cisalpine Gaul. M’.
Aquillius, Marius’ colleague in the consulship of 101, brought to an end
the Sicilian slave-war. However, new theatres of war had opened in the
East. Lycaonia was detached from Cappadocia by Rome. In 102 the

84 Ferrary 1983 (c 50) (dating law to 100); on Bruns no. 9 (p. 53) see Tibiletti 195 3 (F 160) 57-75;
Lintott 1978 (B 190).

85 App. BCiv. 1.28.126—-7; Val. Max. 1x.7.2; De Vir. Ii. 73; Oros. v.17.3; Cic. Har. Resp. 43; Sest.
101; Inser. Ital. x111.3, no. 16; Badian 1962 (c 8) 218-19.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERALS AND TRIBUNES 97

praetor M. Antonius was given as his province Cilicia and a campaign
against the pirates. T. Didius made an expedition beyond the river
Hebrus in Thrace and by 101 had added to the province of Macedonia an
area known as the Caenic Chersonese (see below). There was also a
foretaste of future trouble when an embassy from Mithridates VI of
Pontus was suspected by Saturninus of trying to bribe senators and he
treated them with such violence that he was afterwards charged with
violating their diplomatic immunity (p. 142 below).

In 101 Glaucia, the author of the latest /ex de repetundis, was tribune.
After Marius’ victory he presided over the tribunician elections, in
which Saturninus was elected for the second time with the assistance of
soldiers returned from the war, and a competitor A. Nunnius (or
Ninnius) was killed. One somewhat confused source states that L.
Equitius sought the tribunate unsuccessfully in the latter’s place.%6
Marius himself was re-elected to a sixth consulship, allegedly after
bribery (presumably he had distributed some of the Cimbric spoils to his
soldiers, who were the electors). However, it is not clear how and on
what grounds he was freed from legal restrictions on candidature this
time. Glaucia himself became praetor immediately following his tribu-
nate, something not illegal, since the tribunate was outside the normal
cursus of offices, but distinctly unusual.

Important legislation in 100 is ascribed to Saturninus by our literary
sources. However, a further item must be added either to the year 101 or
100, which reflects on his policies and the attitude of populares at this
time. This is the law about the praetorian provinces (ch. 2, pp. 32, 35-6),
now known to us from two overlapping groups of texts from Delphi and
Cnidus, which has been traditionally termed the ‘pirate law’. This law
was a plebiscite passed after the election of Marius and L. Valerius
Flaccus to the consulships of 100 but before the provincial arrangements
for that year had been completed by the Senate (a task which the law
claimed for itself). Most of the measures themselves are not particularly
remarkable. New levies are not to be sent to Macedonia; the future
governors of this province are to concern themselves with tribute-
collecting and must visit the newly acquired Caenic Chersonese for at
least sixty days; Cilicia is made a praetorian province and diplomacy is to
be undertaken with Rhodes and the kings of the eastern Mediterranean
to ensure a concerted campaign against the pirates; the governor of the
province of Asia meanwhile is to secure Lycaonia and perhaps Pamphy-
lia. However, there are also general provisions about a governor’s
conduct. He must not move outside his province except for the purpose
of travelling to and from his tasks or for reasons of state (in this the law

8 Livy Per. -xtx; App. BCiv. 1.28.127~8; Val. Max. 1x.7.1-3; De Vir. Il. 73; Flor. 1.4.1
(emphasizing Saturninus’ own position as C. Gracchus’ political heir).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

98 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

repeated the provisions of a Lex Porcia passed apparently in the
February of the same year). Any man appointed in the absence of a
regular governor was to have the governor’s full powers of jurisdiction
until his return to Rome. The coda of the law is a series of enforcement
clauses, requiring magistrates to obey the law and to swear oaths to that
effect and threatening anyone who obstructs the performance of its
provisions with a fine of 200,000 sesterces on each count — enough to
drive many of them into exile. A special form of judicial procedure was
established for the exaction of these fines.87

The apparently commonplace nature of the majority of its chapters
should not hide from us the radical features of the law. This law and the
preceding Lex Porcia are the first laws known to us to lay down general
positive rules for provincial governors — something developed later in
Julius Caesar’s /ex de repetundis, the legislation of Augustus and the edicts
of later emperors. In this plebiscite, as in the bills of the Gracchi about
Asia, a tribune deals with the details of imperial administration, which
were normally left to the Senate, and directs the magistrates’ activities.
Finally, coercion and threats are used to enforce the law in a manner
reminiscent of the Athenian democracy at the height of its power. The
oaths themselves are not new. The agrarian law of 111 refers to earlier
oaths required by legislators, and such requirements, in conjunction
with penal clauses, exist on the bronze fragments from Bantia and
Tarentum, but these fall short of the elaborate procedure we have here.®8
The law is thus radical in form and principle, if not apparently in content,
in that it asserts the sovereignty of the assembly over the minutiae of
Roman government. If the law belongs to early 100, it is difficult not to
ascribe it to Saturninus or a friendly colleague of his; if it is a law of late
101, then the influence of Servilius Glaucia must be suspected. The law
envisages the co-operation of C. Marius and it is likely that it had his
blessing.

The legislation of Saturninus in 100 known to us from literary sources
has a familiar appearance, recalling the Gracchi, though the land laws
had the particular function of accommodating Marius’ veterans. A grain
law, which restored distributions to the plebs at Rome at the Gracchan
price, was fiercely resisted by the younger Servilius Caepio, who was
quaestor at the treasury that year. When Saturninus ignored the vetoes of
tribunes, Caepio at the head of a gang broke up the apparatus required
for voting. The law, however, seems eventually to have been passed and
Caepio later in the year issued with a colleague coins celebrating the
buying of corn according to a decree of the Senate. Saturninus’ land

87 Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170), cf. Greenidge—Clay 279-81 for the original Delphi

text; Lintott 1976 (B 189); Ferrary 1977 (C 49).
88 Tibiletti 1953 (F 160) 61ff; Passerini 1934 (c 117) r2iff

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERALS AND TRIBUNES 99

legislation included projects for founding colonies in Sicily, Achaea and
Macedonia — using the looted gold from Toulouse. We also hear of a
colony founded by C. Marius in Corsica. Iunonia and Narbo Martius
were precedents for colonization outside Italy, but the policy was not a
prerogative of populares, as is shown by the settlements in the Balearic
Islands and the foundation of Eporedia in Cisalpina this year. In fact, the
centuriation of the land of Corinth, prior to some kind of settlement, had
been ordered in the final section of the agrarian law of 111, and this may
have been one of the sites chosen by Saturninus.®?

A further land bill, however, became the focus of a struggle between
Saturninus and his political opponents. This proposed the distribution
into allotments of land in Cisalpine Gaul, which the Cimbri had taken
from its previous inhabitants. We do not know the scale or the situation
of these allotments. It is therefore impossible to establish if there could
have been any valid objections to the bill, such as the hostility that it
would have provoked among the local inhabitants. In principle, the
measure was little different from earlier laws assigning land in Cisalpina
or from Flaminius’ plebiscite of 232. We are told that the bill was resisted
by the urban plebs on the ground that the Italians were being excessively
privileged. It was only passed in the assembly after violence in which
countrymen, who had served under Marius and had been specially
brought into the city by Saturninus, were victorious. Although there
was clearly hostility among the urban plebs towards Roman citizens
from rural Italy, who would have constituted the bulk of Marius’ army
and the majority of likely recipients under the law, this does not entirely
explain the reference to Italians. Marius must have been providing land
for allies as well. We know that in one of Saturninus’ bills it was laid
down that Marius could create three (so the Cicero manuscripts) new
Roman citizens in each colony. This would have enabled him to reward
Italian allies who had served him well and also make a political gesture of
good will towards Italy, something which he had done on his own
account, when he had enfranchised a cohort of Umbrian auxiliary troops
on the field of battle.

Saturninus forced through this agrarian bill in defiance of vetoes
attempted by other tribunes and of demands to adjourn the assembly
because thunder had occurred. He is said to have told his aristocratic
opponents that it would hail on them, if they would not keep quiet. In
fact this is the first known example of religious obstruction being used
against a contentious tribunician bill. It is probable that there genuinely
was thunder and his opponents seized on this as a means of resisting him.

89 Rhet, Her. 1.21; Crawford (B 144) no. 330; Greenidge—Clay 107, 111; lex agr. 96ff.

% App. BCiv. 1.29.130-30.134; Cic. Balb. 46, 48; Val. Max. v.2.8; De Vir. 11. 73.7; Badian 1958 (a
1) 207.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

100 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

The formal, including the religious, requirements for legislation had
been laid down in the Leges Aelia and Fufia before 133. Nevertheless, up
to 100 B.C. a presiding magistrate was allowed considerable discretion
about recognizing or ignoring reports of evil omens, although, if he
chose to ignore them, he might be prosecuted later. As it happened, this
controversial incident seems to have created a precedent: the reporting
of genuine or fictitious portents became a common form of obstruction
in the late Republic.?! On this occasion, after the urban plebs had backed
the obstructors, they were forced back by the demobilized soldiers loyal
to Marius. When they resorted to using clubs, the Marians did the same
and overcame them. So the responsibility for first using force rested with
Saturninus’ supporters, but that for first using weapons with his
opponents.

After the passage of the bill the opposition found a new focus in the
oath which all senators (not only the magistrates, as in the law about the
Praetorian provinces) were required to swear within five days on pain,
according to Appian, of a fine of 500,000 sesterces and expulsion from
the Senate. The old enemy of Marius and Saturninus, Metellus Numidi-
cus, refused to swear this oath. Marius circumvented the resistance of
other senators by suggesting that the obligation imposed by the oath was
contingent on the validity of the law and oath-taking did not prejudge
this issue. This manoeuvre seems to have been both well founded in law
and politically adroit. Marius did not wish to lose a law in his own
interest, but he preferred to avoid confrontation with his opponents.
Saturninus tried to have Metellus removed from the Senate for refusing
to swear, but other tribunes protected him. In response, Saturninus
proposed a bill exiling Metellus, presumably on the ground that he was
no longer obeying the laws as a citizen should (his argument would thus
have been similar to that used to justify the killing of Gracchan
supporters who were ‘enemies’). In face of this Metellus withdrew into
exile, in order, it is said, to prevent a civil war, and Saturninus had
proclamation duly made by Marius that Metellus was forbidden fire and
water.°2 The event brought odium on Marius among the aristocracy and
among other opponents of Saturninus, which was to be exploited in due
course in order to achieve Metellus’ recall. In the longer term the story
became a legend — initially because it was grist to the mill of historians
hostile to Marius like Rutilius Rufus and Posidonius, later because
perhaps of the parallels with the exile of Cicero, which the orator himself
highlighted. As a result the affair overshadows the rest of Saturninus’
actions in other accounts and has done much to obscure their true
significance.

' Astin 1964 (F 7).

9 App. BC. 1.30.135-31.140; Plut. Mar. 29; Greenidge-Clay 106-7; Lintott 1972 (F 102) 245-6.
93 Most obvious in Plut. Mar. 29; Malitz 1983 (B 69) 378-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERALS AND TRIBUNES 1ol

At the time Saturninus must have appeared unstoppable: the legisla-
tion met with no challenge and both he and L. Equitius were elected
tribunes for the following year. Then, probably towards the end of the
year (even if Appian’s chronology may not be secure), the consular
elections were held. One candidate was M. Antonius, who was still
outside the city with his soldiers waiting for a triumph, another was C.
Memmius, formerly an active tribune in 111 but now feared by
Saturninus, a third was Glaucia, who was seeking with Saturninus’
support to become consul directly after being praetor, contrary to the /ex
annalis. On the day of the election Glaucia’s candidature was not
accepted, Memmius was clubbed to death by Saturninus’ men and the
assembly was adjourned in confusion. Saturninus gathered further
support from the countryside and seized the Capitol. Meanwhile the
Senate passed for the second time in Roman history the senatus consultum
ultimum, requesting the consuls, with the co-operation of the other
magistrates, to defend the public interest. Marius himself probably took
the view that, if anyone was to take action against Saturninus and
Glaucia, it was in all their interests that he should do so.

The consuls considered employing M. Antonius’ army, but decided
initially to avoid the dangerous precedent of bringing a regular Roman
army into the civil sector of Rome, defined by the pomoerium, the sacred
boundary of the city. Marius distributed arms and formed a militia, with
which he besieged Saturninus’ men on the Capitol. They surrendered
and were imprisoned in the senate-house after receiving some kind of
guarantee against summary execution from Marius. But this did them no
good. They were attacked by a lynch-mob and either stoned to death in
the senate-house or killed while seeking sanctuary elsewhere (the details
in the sources are highly coloured and often inconsistent). The dead
included Saturninus and Glaucia themselves, L. Equitius, M. Saufeius,
currently quaestor, and Saturninus’ brother, Cn. Cornelius Dolabella.%

Marius gained little advantage from his attempt to preside over a
disciplined restoration of law and order. After he left office, relatives of
Metellus Numidicus (especially his son, later surnamed Pius) dogged his
path with the sombre and dishevelled appearance which indicated
mourning, and pleaded for Metellus’ restoration.» After obstruction by
P. Furius, who was in the writer’s view tribune in 99, this was enacted the
following year, while Furius himself was torn to pieces by a mob, when
he was prosecuted by two tribunes after leaving office. One of these,
however, was himself later condemned, allegedly for openly praising
Saturninus. Another victim was Sex. Titius, who as tribune in 99 had

% App. BCiv. 1.32.141-3 5.146; Greenidge—Clay 108-9. A different chronology ine.g., Badian 1984
(c 17) with references to earlier discussions. See also Passerini 1934 (c 117) 281ff.

9 Diod. xxxvi.15; Cic. Red. Sen. 37; Red. Pop. 6; App. BCiv. 1.33.147-8. Cf. Lintott 1968 (a 62)
16-20 on the significance of mourning.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

102 3. POLITICAL HISTORY, 146-95 B.C.

succeeded in passing an agrarian law, which perhaps had developed
some of Saturninus’ proposals. As for Saturninus’ own legislation,
Cicero tells us that, although not formally repealed, its validity remained
in question and some of the colony foundations were simply not put into
effect. However, the coin-evidence points towards the implementation
of allotments in Cisalpina. In this way a clear decision on the controversy
was avoided. Titius’ success suggests that there was still support for
radical measures and it would have been politically unwise to rescind
Saturninus’ acts directly. However, in 98 the consuls passed the Lex
Caecilia Didia, which declared that infringements of the auspices caused
by the neglect of evil omens rendered legislation invalid, entrusting
decisions in such matters to the Senate. So preparations were made to
frustrate the next popularis legislator.%

The political pendulum appeared to be swinging back towards
senatorial dominance. After a prosecution of the younger Caepio for his
violence in obstructing Saturninus had failed, C. Norbanus was also
prosecuted, equally unsuccessfully, for sedition in his attacks on the
elder Caepio a decade before — ironically under Saturninus’ own law de
maiestate. In 95 the consuls L. Licinius Crassus and Q. Mucius Scaevola
risked the obvious offence to allied opinion by passing a law instituting
trials for those who were illegally usurping Roman citizenship. This was
to embitter leading Italians and bring to the fore once again the issue of
granting Latins and Italians citizenship en b/oc. There can be no doubt
that there was a conflict between the ‘good men’, who were seeking to re-
establish senatorial authority, and those loyal to Marius and the policies
of Saturninus, but whether these formed two coherent ‘factions’, one
Metellan and the other Marian, is questionable. The ‘good men’
themselves were divided by an especially bitter quarrel between M.
Livius Drusus, the future tribune of 91, and the younger Caepio, which
became a factor in the even graver division that was to result from the
policies of Drusus in his tribunate.%”

It was no coincidence that Glaucia’s restoration of the quaestio de
repetundis to equestrian jurors had not so far been challenged. Eguites are
reported to have protected Metellus Numidicus from Saturninus in 102
and to have shared in the repression of Saturninus in 100 (the members of
the first group were conceivably all young aristocrats, but this does not
seem to have been true of the second group). There was a precedent:
according to Sallust egustes had deserted the Gracchan cause. However
interested they were in certain reforms, men of property and standing
were reluctant to see the political fabric torn by sheer disorder, even if
they could acquiesce in the profits of a more limited use of force, such as

% Lintott 1968 (a 62) 1368; Crawford (B 145) 181-3.
%7 Badian 1957 (c 6); Gruen 1965 (c 66).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GENERALS AND TRIBUNES 103

assisted the passage of the land legislation.9® Nevertheless, when (¢. 92
B.C.) Rutilius Rufus was condemned for taking bribes from Greeks to
the detriment of Roman tax-collectors while legate to the governor of
Asia, Q. Scaevola, this renewed the old fears of senators and provided
another element in the political conflict which came near to disintegrat-
ing Roman and Italian society at the end of the decade.”

That story will be told in the following chapter. Meanwhile, this
section is appropriately closed, in the Roman fashion, by an obituary on
Saturninus and Glaucia. It is futile to attempt a revaluation of them by
toning down the violence in their politics. No doubt there was more
used on the other side than our sources record, but we cannot completely
rewrite the vulgate. It is more important to recognize that their use of
violence was a reasoned reaction to the defeat of the Gracchi by force.
Saturninus and Glaucia counted on being backed by a friendly consul,
but Marius in the end deserted them. They were seeking not merely to
implement necessary reforms but, in the tradition of C. Gracchus, to
direct policy from the assembly. Since most of their measures could not
appeal to more than a section of the population, they faced continual
political battles which they were determined to win at all costs. The
denigration they suffered after their deaths is an unconscious compli-
ment from their aristocratic political opponents. As for the plebs, it is
significant that thirty-seven years afterwards Caesar and Labienus
should have sought to win popular favour by prosecuting a man
involved in the deaths of Glaucia and Saturninus.!0

%8 Sall. Jug. 42.1; Brunt 1965 (c 31) 118; (A 17) gof. % Greenidge—Clay 125-7.
100 Cic. Rab. Perd.; Suet. Iul. 12; Dio xxxvit.26-8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 4

ROME ANDITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

E. GABBA

The relationship between Rome and the Italian allies reached a turning-
point with the agrarian proposal of Ti. Gracchus in 133 B.c. For, as the
historical tradition represented by Book 1 of the Civil Wars of Appian
reveals with great clarity, it is at this moment that there emerged an
‘allied problem’ with political and institutional dimensions. The resump-
tion by the Roman state of ager publicus which had been occupied more or
less legally by Italian as well as by Roman possessores probably involved a
breach of the treaties which bound Rome and the allied states. Even if it
is not possible to say whether the resumption of ager publicus affected
particularly lands occupied by Italian possessores, it is clear that the links
between the upper classes of Italy and Rome, which had become ever
closer in the course of the two generations which followed the Hanniba-
lic War, were gravely compromised.

The serious economic and social consequences of the agrarian law for
the upper classes of Italy were an implicit contradiction ofa policy on the
part of Rome which had up to that point set out to guarantee the
supremacy, viability and acceptability of the ruling classes of the
communities of Italy in the context of those communities, and hence
their position as representatives of the communities v#s-a-vis Rome. The
intervention of Scipio Aemilianus (ch. 3, p. 74) only succeeded in part
in healing the breach; and the diminution in the importance of the
agrarian problem after C. Gracchus did not mean that trust once gone
could be restored. It is disputed whether the proletarit of the Italian
communities were eligible for the distribution of the ager publicus which
had been resumed by the agrarian commission; whether they were or
not, this would have had implications for the social tensions within the
Italian, and indeed Latin, communities. We have no other evidence for
these tensions, but we can be sure that they will have been no less serious
than those within the Roman state and we may legitimately suspect that
they will have been even more serious, for a variety of reasons, notably
the continued existence of local taxation, long suspended at Rome; this is
indeed the impression which the Italian perspective on the crisis given by

For Rome’s relations with Italy in the second.century 8.c. see Gabba in CAH vir’, ch. 7, pp.

197-243.

104
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 105

Appian can and should suggest. The case of the revolt of the Latin
colony of Fregellae in 125 B.c. is emblematic. The city had on various
occasions been the representative of the Latin colonies at Rome; it had
also undergone profound changes in the ethnic composition of the
citizen body in the course of the preceding fifty years. At the moment of
the violent breach with Rome, the city must simply have shattered in
two; nor will it have been a question only of the ‘betrayal’ of the city to
Rome by Q. Numitorius Pullus, i.e. by an aristocracy linked in one way
or another to Rome. Every social, and indeed ethnic, group of the city
must have been involved; for after the revolt it was possible to found
nearby the Roman colony of Fabrateria Nova with those citizens of the
Latin colony who had remained loyal.’

The various proposals for general grants of Roman citizenship made
during the 120s B.c., to compensate for the economic loss caused by the
agrarian law, were naturally directed above all at the Italian and Latin
upper classes, who were the only ones who would have been able in
practice to benefit from them. The proposals also contained clauses
offering alternative and different benefits and privileges, also to be found
in the extortion law of the Gracchan period as recognition and reward
for successful prosecutors. All this is probably an indication that there
did not yet exist a general awareness of the practical value of Roman
citizenship as compared with the obviousness of economic loss and loss
of prestige. Rome was probably also very reluctant to deprive the allied
communities of their wealthy ruling classes; there was perhaps also an
awareness of the difficulties which were likely to result from an extension
of the functions of the Roman state consequent on an increase in the
citizen body. So when the magistrates of Latin colonies were granted the
right to acquire Roman citizenship, probably after 125, this was no
doubt done in such a way as not to remove them from their communities.

In any case, perhaps partly as a result of the various Roman proposals
for grants of citizenship,” but mostly as a result of the rapid deterioration
in the general political situation, the allies became progressively more
aware of the need to cease to be subjects and to share in the exercise of
imperial power, hence to acquire Roman citizenship. On the other hand,
those increased pressures ran up against growing Roman hostility to this
kind of general grant. It was not simply a manifestation of proud and
stubborn exclusiveness, though that of course existed and displayed
itself in the unprecedented harshness of some Roman magistrates
towards the allies;3 rather it will have been the result of a not unreason-

' Numitorius: Cicero, Inv. Rhet. 1.105; Fin. v.62; Fabrateria: Vell. Pat. 1.15.4; Coarelli 1981 (B
275).

2 App. BCw. 1.152. For all citations of Appian, I assume reference to my commentary, Appiani
Bellorum Civilium Liber 1, Gabba 1967 (B 40).

3-C. Gracchus, de /egibus promulgatis, ORF fr. 48, pp. 191-2 (Teanum Sidicinum, Cales,
Ferentinum).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

106 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

able fear that the whole political and institutional structure of the Roman
state would collapse.

Furthermore, there were continually present at Rome, in unprece-
dented numbers, Italians of diverse social origin and often also different
political tendencies; their participation in contiones aroused the xenopho-
bic feelings of the urban plebs. That body was itself growing danger-
ously in size and taking up a position steadily more opposed to that of the
rural plebs; its feelings could be only too readily invoked by crude and
vigorous demagogy.4 The Roman government resorted to measures to
expel Italians and incurred substantial odium as a result (Vol. viir?, pp.
240-2).5

This complex political situation can be understood if it is seen as
developing against a background of growing prosperity, affecting much
of the centre and south of Italy from the middle of the second century
onwards; naturally there were regional variations (the Greek cities of the
deep south remained in pronounced decline) and great inequalities in the
impact of the changes on different social classes.6 This growing pros-
perity is not incompatible with the existence of a crisis for traditional
patterns of Italian agriculture, which was being transformed in response
to the development of the Italian economy as a whole. The crisis
naturally had grave social consequences, in terms of the decline of the
independent peasant proprietor, but the process was, and is, typical of
periods of rapid change.

It is the archaeological evidence above all which reveals the scale of
public (above all temple) building programmes, again with regional
variations, and the extent to which Italy had been influenced by Greek
artistic traditions.’ The number of sanctuaries built or rebuilt reveals the
political interest of the upper classes in precisely this form of activity; in
some cases, the enormous economic resources of the temples were
administered by local notables involved in one form or another of
business activity and, as at Praeneste, with eastern connexions.§ At the
same time, a monetary economy was spreading even to the most remote
areas of the peninsula, evidence both of the commercial activities of the
upper classes and of their growing wealth. There will have been rewards
for the lower classes also, if only as a result of the upsurge in public
building programmes, pursued in Italy as at Rome with clear awareness
of their implications.

The investment of the wealth acquired by the upper classes of Italy
was naturally directed for the most part to agriculture, encouraging its

4 C. Fannius, ORF, fr. 4, p. 144. 5 For Lucilius 1088, see Cichorius 1908 (B 16) 208-12.
® Crawford 1985 (B 145) 173-87; for the environment in Italy in general, see Giardina and
Schiavone 1981 (G 104) 1 chs. 6-20. 7 In general, see Hellenismus.

8 Bodei Giglioni 1977 (G 17) 59-76; F. Coarelli, in Les Bourgeoisies 217-40.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 107

development in more modern and profitable directions, concentrating
on production for the market; hence bitter hostility towards the
Gracchan proposals, which for a time must have placed a question mark
over the development just described. (It does not seem possible,
however, to show that after the Gracchan period Rome actually
increased Roman exploitation of ager publicus at the expense of the allies.)®

The widespread prosperity mentioned above derived, in the Italian
communities and the Latin colonies, as at Rome, from increasing
participation in the exploitation of the provinces and from the existence
of the empire in general; for one practical result of this, as has been well
shown, was a growth in exchange between Italy and the provinces.!0
There will have been various ways in which men participated in the
process, not least what may have been an official practice of distributing
booty to allied communities; the range of provenances of the dedicatory
inscriptions of L. Mummius after his conquest of Greece in 146 may
reflect a practice of this kind, and the existence in the Po valley of land
belonging to communities in the centre and south could be interpreted as
the result of grants made by the Roman state in return for services
rendered.!! Official distribution of the rewards of conquest is certainly
likely, to make up for the fact that, while Roman citizens did not pay
tributum after 167, the citizens of the allied communities did not enjoy any
such privilege;!2 and the exemption from local taxation which the
Roman government could grant to individual members of the allied
communities in special circumstances could only have the effect of
increasing the resentment of those who still had to pay.

Naturally, the principal source of riches for individual members of the
allied communities was energetic participation in business activities in
the provinces. It used to be held that Italians formed the dominant
element among men of business in the East; that now seems less certain
and careful and up-to-date analysis of the names of the traders on Delos
would seem to suggest rather a predominance of Roman citizens;!3 if so,
the term ‘Romaioi’, generally regarded as a blanket term for Romans,
Latins and allies, will have been used with greater accuracy. This shift of
emphasis, however, does not alter the fact of a substantial community of
interest and of a shared mentality, unaffected by juridical differences.
Conflicts have been alleged between men of business, whether Roman or
Italian, and Roman equites, the latter involved above all in public
building contracts and in military supply, in other words in large-scale
economic and commercial activity, in the western provinces as well as

9 Nagle 1973 (B 74). 10 Crawford 1985 (B 145) 339-40.

" ILLRP 327-30; Beloch 1926 (A 9) 624; an alternative hypothesis in Crawford 1985 (B 145)
339-40. 12 App. BCiw. 1.30.

'3 Wilson 1966 (a 128); Cassola 1971 (G 35); Solin 1982 (D 293).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

108 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

elsewhere. However, although such conflicts have been held to be one of
the possible causes of the Social War,!4 there is no evidence that they
existed.

The ‘unity’ of the business class outside Italy is attested by such well-
known episodes as the defence of Cirta in Numidia against Jugurtha by
Italian men of business.!5 And the protection afforded by the Roman
government was extended indifferently to Roman citizens, Latins and
Italian (or overseas) allies, as emerges at various points in the Delphi and
Cnidus versions of the law about provinces of 101 (ch. 3, pp. 97—-8).!¢ It is
indeed perhaps in terms of the advantages and privileges which the
Italian allies derived from the protection of the Roman government that
one should explain the acquisition of the citizenship of cities in Magna
Graecia by Greek and oriental men of business, a phenomenon attested
for the end of the second and the beginning of the first centuries B.C.;
these were men who had business relationships with the cities con-
cerned; and one cannot exclude the possibility that their acquisition of
citizenship there was seen as a first step towards Roman citizenship.'”

The situation characteristic of the East was probably also largely true
of Sicily,'!8 and above all of Cisalpine Gaul; already in the second century
B.C., alongside a programme of colonization which had involved for the
most part the land south of the Po, there had occurred both spontaneous
Roman and Italian immigration and large-scale investment in land by the
upper classes, both north and south of the Po.!9

The fact that the Latin and Italian business classes also formed the
political groups in power in the allied states could only underline the gap
which existed between allies and Roman citizens in Italy. Whereas, in the
provinces, the juridical distinction was at the very least of no great
practical importance, in Italy the allies were ever more visibly subject to
Rome and wholly unable to influence the political decisions of the ruling
power, which now closely affected the economic interests of the upper

14 Salmon 1962 (c 127).

15 Sall. Ing. 26.1 cf. 21.2; 26.3; 41.1; Gabba 1976 (c 55) 85-6; for Sall. Jug. 64.5; 65.4; Vell Pat.
i1.11,2, see Gabba 1972 (c 56) 776.

16 Delphi copy, 36: moAirat ‘Pupatwy adppaxot re ex ris TraAdlas Aativor; Cnidus copy, col. u,
lines 6-7; cf. col. m1, lines 30-4; Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170) 201-2. The phrase
seems to bea poor translation of the asyndeton ‘cives Romani socii Italici nominis Latini’, where, as
in Livy xx1.§§.4; XXXVIIL 35.9 there figure allies as well as Latins; contra, Jones 1926 (B 177) 168-9,
holding that the soci Italici were excluded.

17 [Délos 1724 (106-93 B.c.); Mancinetti Santamaria 1982 (D 281); 1983 (G 151).

18 Fraschetti (G 74), though the interpretation of the inscription from Polla, CIL P,
638=ILLRP 454, does not seem acceptable.

'9 For the Sasernae, whose properties are perhaps to be localized in the neighbourhood of
Dertona, see Kolendo 1973 (G 139); for Cornelius Nepos in Insubria, perhaps in the neighbourhood
of Ticinum, see Gabba, in Storia di Paviat, (Milan, 1984) 219; for the presence of Ita/iotai in Noricum,
Polyb.xxxtv.10.13; Strab,1v.6.12.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 109

classes among them. Traditional links between the Roman upper classes
and Italian notables could not cope with the strain and will have seemed
progressively more inadequate.2° At the same time, the assimilation of
the behaviour of the Italian elites to Roman norms, which had forged
ahead at ever greater speed over the previous century, had gone beyond
language and culture to affect the political systems and magistracies of
the allied cities. (The most striking evidence of the process would be the
Lex Osca Tabulae Bantinae, if we could be sure that it belonged to the
turn of the second and first centuries, thus to before the Social War, even
if only just.)2! At the same time, this assimilation of the political
structures of the allies to those of Rome will have prepared the way in
general terms for the process of municipalization which followed the
Social War.

Demand for Roman citizenship will have grown after 123, not least
because of worries aroused by the clear decline in the standards of
political behaviour at Rome. And it is precisely in this period that men
from outside Rome acquired the right to plead in the courts there; what
resulted was a growth of municipal and even Italian forensic rhetoric.?2
The development derived from the possibility under the extortion law of
the Gracchan period for an ally, among others, to accuse a senator of
extortion; and the new rhetoric was often identified with a popularis
political position. It is this shift in the origins of accusers in the courts
that explains both the emergence of a school of Latin rhetoric and its
suppression in the gos, in order to defend traditional avenues of social
and political integration.23

On the other hand, the Germanic threat represented by the Cimbric
invasion of the territory of the Veneti in the north-east will have revived
feelings of Italian solidarity; these feelings will have extended both to the
lower orders and to the Celtic and Ligurian peoples of the Po valley, like
those attested by Polybius in the face of the Gallic threat a century earlier.
As Caesar reveals, perhaps with some exaggeration, the Germanic threat
was still felt as a real one fifty years later. The more or less legal grant of
Roman citizenship by C. Marius to two cohorts of Camertes on the
battlefield during the Cimbric War is a clear indication of the value by
now attached to such a reward.24 And in the closing years of the second
century, during the tribunates of L. Appuleius Saturninus (103 and 100),
the allied problem is represented in our tradition as inextricably linked to
that of the Roman and Italian proletarii enrolled in the armies of Marius

20 Wiseman 1971 (A 130). 21 Bruns no. 8.

22 Cic. Brut. 167-72; cf. 180; 241-2; David 1983 (G 34).
23 Gabba 1953 (c 54) 269-70; David 1979 (G $3).

%4 Cic. Balb. 46-7; Val. Max. v.2.8; Plut.Mar. 28.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

110 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

and to the need to reward them with land, in accordance with the
promises made in 107.75

The Lex Appuleia of 103 provided for the distribution of 100 sagera a
head of land in Africa to the soldiers of Marius, whether Roman or allied,
while the settlements of allied soldiers at least may be connected with the
African cities of imperial date which called themselves Marian.26 There
followed in 100 B.c. a more complex agrarian law (if indeed there was
only one); it provided for the assignation of land in Cisalpine Gaul and
overseas,2” and hence consciously avoided touching ager publicus in the
centre and south of the peninsula. The same law is conventionally
regarded as providing for the foundation (whether in Italy or not) of
citizen colonies, to which, however, allies were also admitted; to three of
these in each colony Marius was authorized to grant Roman citizenship.
The practice is already attested in the first half of the second century, and
we know of one case in our period, T. Matrinius of Spoletium, a Latin,
wh® was later accused before the quaestio concerning illegal acquisition of
citizenship (established by the Lex Licinia Mucia of 95) and acquitted as a
result of the intervention of Marius himself.28 There is explicit testimony
that the allies, that is the allied soldiers recruited among the lower orders,
were the beneficiaries of the law along with the rural plebs, arousing as a
result the hostility of the urban plebs.29 Even if the provisions of the Lex
Appuleia of 100 were not in fact put into effect, large numbers of Italian
allies must none the less have acquired Roman citizenship more or less
legally in this period; for the censors of 95 felt it necessary to have a law
passed, the Lex Licinia Mucia, specifically to exclude from the citizen
body those who had entered it illegally.3°

It seems very likely that this provision was designed in particular to
deal with allies belonging to the upper classes, the principes Italicorum
populorum who had succeeded somehow or other in acquiring citizen-
ship; their feelings were now so aroused that the law was later regarded
as one of the principal causes of the outbreak of the Social War.3! The
quaestio was characterized by Cicero as acerrima,>? and it was said that the

25 The sources reveal the origin of the soldiers of Marius for the most part in the rural proletariat,
Gabba 1976 (c $5) 24: the tradition in Appian will have schematized the opposition between rural
and urban plebs, which emerged in the Gracchan period and came to the fore in the course of 100
B.c., but not invented it; contra, Schneider 1982-3 (c 131).

26 De Vir. 1.73.1; Inser. Ital. xm, 3, no. 7 for Cerceina (but see Barnes 1971 (C 19) who suggests
rather Mariana on Corsica); Brunt 1971 (A 16) 577-81.

27 App. BCw. 1. 130; De Vir. I/l.73.5 (colonies in Sicily, Achaea, Macedonia).

28 Cic. Balb. 48; Badian 1958 (A 1) 260-1; 1970-1 (C 15) 404. 2 Gabba 1956 (B 38) 76-9.

% Cic. Of. 111.47; Balb. 48 and 54; Corn., fr. 10; Asc. 67~—8c. The title of the law was ‘de civibus
redigundis’ and no doubt referred to the reduction of those who had no right to the citizenship to
their legal status as allies; there are no grounds for supposing, with Sco/. Bob. 129, 11. 10-14 Stangl,
that the law expelled anyone from Rome; or that it abolished the possibility of acquiring the
citizenship per migrationem ef censum (Cic. Balb. 54). 31 Asc 68¢, 32 Cic. Balb. 48.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press; 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR III

law evoked general disapproval, even in Cisalpine Gaul south of the
Po,33 presumably because of the guaestio instituted under it. It is,
however, unclear whether the celebrated remark of Cicero that metus
indiciorum was one of the causes of the Social War is to be regarded as
referring to this guaestio.

It has been argued that the Lex Licinia Mucia was a reaction to the
census of 97, supposedly conducted with a certain openness and genero-
sity towards the allies,>5 and attempting to satisfy the aspirations of their
upper classes. The hypothesis cannot be verified. Cicero recalls an
episode in which a crowd which included allies prevented M. Aemilius
Scaurus from speaking and as a result of which he suggested the law to
the consuls; the anecdote has some value, though one need not
necessarily accept the specific occasion on which Scaurus is alleged to
have been interrupted.*6

The political conflicts of the 90s, marked inter alia by great political
trials, involved major issues such as the nature of Roman foreign policy
in the East and, in particular, the ‘allied question’. This was brought
suddenly to the fore once again in 91, the year of the tribunate of M.
Livius Drusus; the year marked virtually the end of the long historical
process which had seen a constant increase in the insistence of the allied
demand ‘for the Roman citizenship, in order to be partners in empire
instead of subjects’.3? The demand was thus in the first instance of a
political nature and, as we have seen, had emerged and grown within the
upper classes of the allies, though even among them it was not
universally supported.

The political programme of Livius Drusus, worked out in agreement
with a large group within the senatorial class and vigorously supported
by it almost to the end, seems reasonably clear both in its totality and in
its ultimate goal.38 That was to reinforce and restore the authority of the
Senate, principally by means of a law on the composition of the juries in
the guaestiones perpetuae; these were given to the senators, but after
(apparently) the injection into the Senate of 300 equites. The proposal

33. Whether one accepts the standard correction of Sallust, Hist. 1.20, by Maurenbrecher, ‘citra
Padum omnibus lex (in) grata fuit’, or whether one adopts the correction ‘frustra’ proposed by La
Penna 1969 (B 63) 254: see Luraschi 1979 (F 105) 85-6 n.188.

Cic. Of. 11.75: ‘tantum Italicum bellum propter iudiciorum metum excitatum’. One may infer
from the context that Cicero is concerned to establish, in connection with the legislation of Drusus
in 91, a link between the rebellion of the allies and the problem posed by the centrality of the
extortion courts: Gabba 1976 (c 55) 70 and 88; contra, Badian 1969 (c 12) 489-90; 1970-1 (Cc 15)

07-8.
‘ 3s Gabba 1976 (c 55) 179-80; Badian 1958 (a 1) 212-13; 1968 (A 3) $33 1970-1 (C 15) 402-6; contra,
Brunt 1965 (c 31) 106. 36 Cic. De Orat. 11.257; Bates 1986 (Cc 20) 272-3.

37 App. BCiv. t.154-5; Vell. Pat. 1.15.2; Just. XXxVIII.4.13.

38 Gabba 1972 (c 56) 787-90. I here adopt the chronology of the legislation of Drusus there

proposed, though this is not universally accepted: Gabba 1976 (c 55) 131—3; for the grounds on
which the legislation was declared invalid, Lintott 1968 (A 62) 140-3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

112 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

could be seen as inimical to the interests of the egaites as a whole and was
opposed by them, although its intention was in fact an even-handed
reconciliation of the two opposing positions. To this ultimate goal the
entire legislative activity of Drusus was apparently directed; it included
also an agrarian or colonial law and probably also, as the last stage, the
grant of citizenship to the allies. According to the tradition represented
in Appian, concerned principally with the problem of the allies, this last
proposal was really the crowning measure of Drusus.*? It is in any case
certain that on it the group which supported Drusus was not in
agreement.

In general terms and in the light of our knowledge of the politics of the
period after 89, it is legitimate to argue that for the upper classes of Italy
the acquisition of Roman citizenship meant the direct exercise of
political power and that this process was seen, and rightly seen, by the
group around Drusus as a further reinforcement of a moderate political
position within a Roman governing class enlarged in this way. There
will naturally have been an awareness of the widespread existence,
perhaps mostly at the level of the lower classes among the allies, of
deeply rooted anti-Roman feeling; but presumably it was supposed that
it would be possible to control it easily.

Certainly the agrarian law of Drusus, which seems to have raised a
question mark over the position of the ager publicus still in the hands of
the allied upper classes aroused opposition among some allies; that,
however, did not in fact weaken the excellent relations which Drusus
maintained up to the moment of his death with the Italian leaders.4°
Their hopes remained pinned on his political initiative until his murder
and it was this which was the signal for the outbreak of the revolt.

Not all the allies were in agreement with the proposals of Drusus as a
whole; and, according to Appian, the consuls, of whom L. Marcius
Philippus in particular was bitterly hostile to Drusus, were able to bring
to Rome some Etruscans and Umbrians to manifest their opposition,
presumably in the course of contiones.41 This passage poses problems
which cannot easily be resolved, not least because of our uncertainty
over the chronology of Drusus’ measures. If the episode is to be placed
late in 91, the protests would seem to have been directed against the
agrarian law, presumably already passed; and, in addition, there would
seem to have been opposition to the citizenship law, still to be voted on.
Wherever their opposition was directed, the attitude of the Etruscans

39 App. BCiv. 1.155 and 162.

40 Plut. Cat. Min. 2.1-2. Val. Max. 11.1.2; Sen. Brev. Vit 6.1; De Vir. I//. 80.1. The ‘prophecy of
Vegoia’, preserved in the corpus of the Agrimensores, 350 Lachmann, is related to the agrarian law
of Drusus by Heurgon 1959 (c 77); for a different date, Turcan 1976 (c 146).

| App. BCiv. 1.163.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 113

and Umbrians is described as diverging from that of other Italian allies;
and it is hard not to see the whole affair as in any case a consequence of the
peculiar situation of the Etruscan and Umbrian elites within the social
and economic structures of their communities. For their lower classes
were largely agricultural serfs, who would as a result of the citizenship
law have achieved a quite intolerable degree of juridical and political
equality with their masters.*?

The exclusive attitude of part of the Roman governing class remained
unchanged; it was indeed no doubt reinforced by resentment of the
growing personal prestige of Drusus among the Italian allies, which
would certainly have been translated into political power if they had
succeeded in obtaining the citizenship as a result of his efforts. For
oligarchies cannot tolerate the emergence of one of their members
possessed of power too far beyond that of the rest. An extraordinary
document, probably referred to by the consul Philippus in one of his
speeches against Drusus, is preserved in a fragment of Diodorus: it is an
oath of loyalty to Rome and a promise of unconditional support to
Drusus, as the person through whom Roman citizenship had been
obtained; it must have been sworn by the Italian leaders.*3 The text seems
to document an awareness of the necessity of creating religious as well as
other links with the new citizens-to-be, so as to overcome traditional
local loyalties. It is significant that after the Social War the cult of
Capitoline Jupiter was founded in many of the new municipia, whereas
many sanctuaries in the centre and the south, which had been the centres
of tribal political and religious activities, were closed.

Naturally, however, as we have seen, the most obviously negative
aspect of the programme of Drusus for the oligarchy was the unaccep-
table personal power which he would have achieved and which the text
we have been considering reveals in the clearest possible manner; hence
the hardening of the opposition. Drusus lost at the beginning of
September in 91 one of his most influential supporters in the Senate, L.
Licinius Crassus; the consul Philippus then managed to persuade the
assembly to repeal his laws, and, shortly after, towards the middle of
October, Drusus was assassinated.“4

The death of Drusus meant the end of allied hopes and was the

42 Gabba 1972 (c 56) 788-9; there was a similar situation at Vicetia in Transpadana after 49 B.C.:
Gabba 1983 (G 91) 42-4. Differences in the structure of property and in the nature of the agrarian
economy, between Umbria and inland Etruria on the one hand and coastal Etruria on the other
hand, are suggested by J. Heurgon, ‘L’Ombrie 4 l’époque des Gracques et Sylla’, in Atti ] Convegno
Studi Umbri 1963 (Perugia, 1964) 124~5; contra, Gabba, in 1979 (G 95) 36-7. When Appian then says
that the Etruscans welcomed the Lex Julia de civitate, BCiv. 1.213, he is to be understood as saying
that it was welcome to the lower classes.

“8 Diod. xxxvit.11. The genuineness of the text was denied by Rose 1937 (c 124) 165-81, because

ofan alleged inconsistency with the normal Roman formula, but defended by Taylor 1949 (A 120) 46
and 198 (n. 67). “4 App. BCiv. 1.164. Inser. Ital. x11, 3, nO. 74: ‘in magistratu occisus est’.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

114 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

decisive factor behind the outbreak of armed revolt. The allies began to
plan, to exchange hostages among themselves and to form agreements
for action,“ precisely the behaviour which Rome had always managed to
make impossible, by not creating any kind of confederation between her
allies, but only unilateral treaties with each of them individually.
Although the steps taken by the allies were secret, the Roman govern-
ment soon got to hear of them, not least because in some cases they were
already, towards the end of 91, organizing armed forays against Rome;
one such was commanded by the Marsian leader, Q. Pompaedius (or
Poppaedius) Silo, and was only by chance thwarted by a certain Caius
Domitius (perhaps in fact the consul of 96, Cnaeus Domitius).47 The
Roman government entrusted the job of watching what was going on to
magistrates or ex-magistrates with long-standing links with the different
areas which were known to be disaffected; it may be that it was in that
capacity that Domitius was able to act and it was certainly in that capacity
that Q. (or C.) Servilius found himself in Picenum. When he discovered
that an exchange of hostages was in progress at Asculum, he voiced
threats which provoked his murder in ‘an explosion of hatred against
Rome’, which engulfed all the many Romans in the city and immediately
conferred an entirely new dimension on the revolt against Rome.*8 It was
of course led by the local elites who were anxious for the Roman
citizenship in order to be able to enter the Roman ruling class, but it had
at the same time to deploy the anti-Roman feelings which were
widespread among the masses and which, long repressed, were now
given free rein.

In Rome, the outbreak of the revolt of the allies brought about a
renewal of the link between the equites and the tribunes, which had been
weakened by the events of 100, when Senate and eguites had found
themselves united in opposition to the projects of Appuleius Saturninus
and his supporters. At the beginning of 90, a law of the tribune Q. Varius
Hybrida set up a quaestio extraordinaria with equites as jurors, to inquire
who was responsible for the events which had led to the revolt of the
allies. Naturally, since it was the only guaestio which functioned during
the war, it was also used without scruple for personal political ends;4? not
all of those condemned were friends or supporters of Drusus or his
policy. Only a year later, in 89, was the nobility, encouraged by a turn for
the better in the course of the war, able to get the composition of the

“5 App. BCiv 1.169. For narratives of the war, see von Domaszewski 1924 (c 46); Haug 1947 (c
74); De Sanctis 1976 (c 129). 46 App. BCiv. 1.170.

“7 Diod. xxxvit.13.1; Gabba 1976 (c 55) 261 n. 16. It would also be possible to date the event
somewhat earlier, at the same time as the arrival of the Etruscans and Umbrians in Rome.

48 Diod. xxxvit.13.2; cf. 12.1-3; App. BC#. 1.171-4; Laffi 1975 (B 303).

“ Asc. 67-8c; Val.Max. vitt.6.4; App. BCiv. 1.165 (wrongly dating the law before the uprising);
Badian 1969 (c 12); Gabba 1976 (C 55) 133-4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 11g

juries in the gaaestio “ex lege Varia’ changed; this was done by means of a
law of the tribune M. Plautius Silvanus, which introduced annual
election by the tribes. Senators and ‘quidam ex plebe’ began to serve on
the juries and the eguites lost their monopoly. Q. Varius and his colleague
in the tribunate, Cn. Pomponius, were immediately condemned under
the law.5°

Before the outbreak of open hostilities, but when the allies were
already under arms, towards the end of 91, there was perhaps one last
attempt by the Italians to arrive at a peaceful settlement of their
differences with Rome; it was, however, rejected by the Senate.5! War
was now inevitable. It took its name, the Marsian War, from the people
who were the first to take up arms; when its scale was fully understood,
which did not take long, it came to be called the Italian and then the
Social War. The greater part of the allied peoples living along the ridge
of the central and southern Apennines took part: besides the people of
Asculum and other groups in Picenum, there were the Marsi, the
Paeligni, the Vestini, the Marrucini (all Sabellian), the Frentani, the
Hirpini, the Lucani, the Samnites, the people of Pompeii and other cities
of southern Campania (all Oscan), the people of Apulia and the citizens
of Venusia.5? Other peoples were more or less forcibly brought to side
with the rebels during the first year of the war: Nola and perhaps Nuceria
and some cities in Apulia.53 On the other hand, the intervention of some
Etruscans and Umbrians at the end of 90 must have been limited in
duration. Finally, there is some evidence for the presence of Gallic
troops among the rebel armies, which suggests that help arrived also
from Gallia Cisalpina.*4 All the Latin colonies remained loyal, with the
exception of Venusia, whose participation in the revolt is not easy to
explain except on the supposition of a marked change in the composition
of the population in the course of the second century B.c., as had
happened at Fregellae. In the vast majority of cases, traditional ties with
Rome were too strong and had always assured the Latins a privileged
position among the allies; as a result, the local aristocracies, now
themselves in large measure possessed of the Roman citizenship
acquired per magistratum, presumably had no great difficulty in keeping
their communities loyal to Rome.

Naturally, even in the communities listed above, not everyone joined
the revolt. We know of individual cities which did not follow the lead of
the ethnic group to which they belonged, for instance Pinna among the
Vestini; we also know of often violent disagreements within single

50 Asc. 79C; Gabba 1976 (c $5) 144-6; 1972 (C $6) 791. 51 App. BCw. 1.176.

52 App. BCiv. 1.175; Livy Per. 72; Oros. v.18.8; Eutropius v.3.1; on the rebel peoples, their leaders
and their eventual distributions in the tribes, see Salmon 1958 (C 126).

53 App. BCiv. 1.185; 187; 190. 3% App. BCiv. 1.219-20.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

116

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIOATUE) OSpquiey © oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

Font STA 5
Tegly

93seuaely”

sanwigg 0

“4001 0s b

$2,230 OOO! JeA0 pueq
Pauljapun saweu-aoejd wuapoW = Fue IP TEA

gersetty

unusewy 7

A coe
a
at ~
-
i
o
2

WNAon wnsysed\>

# BBL038}0A,

.
wnwixny

eucouy:
griessipy

eanjjegeuas

2 PA

eajoeey

unqueuey

wnyeg

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSpquivy © oUTTUC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

tung

<2 wnjnosny
wnisnuey% <4

RSs.
eeuuen, Sy

eidejes

rat

‘W osnuebse5

Apeay peruay £

“SOU@OnN

o Je

“wneuejnasa
°

siodeon

geuesy

winipneg

Fa aan
¥ SW ered.

wnjuersueg

age pulmuoung

ezIgeIS_

sjodean

enejess.. ende
Weiej epg
WwnuaAauag Bue

“tN
at.

eet

=a,

%e,
4,
bey
< winuelAog> WINIeUsA>

7 wi
4 euwsesay
&
a
3)

wnduey

wnudiy

‘3s

Hoging

oF Y

BUIDeIe}

winjuy

ops wumaniey

<i 23 ?
eruBis “a spiouy

118 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

communities and even of positions overtly favourable to Rome. But
even Velleius, writing under Tiberius and a descendant of a notable of
Aeclanum among the Hirpini who had fought with Sulla, shows still a
clear conviction that the allied cause had been fundamentally just.55 In
general, the populations most hostile to Rome, who continued to resist
longest after the end of the war, were those of the Samnite and Lucanian
group, mindful of their long rivalry with Rome. It is Velleius who
records the threat of Pontius Telesinus on the eve of the battle of the
Colline Gate in 82, that it was necessary to destroy the lair of the ‘wolves’
who were the raptores Italicae libertatis.56

Even though the rebels consisted of diverse groups, they were fully
aware that their cause was one and that it was necessary in consequence
to organize themselves into a single people. They renamed their capital
at Corfinium as Italica, a name rich in symbolism,°” but it would be to go
too far to suppose that they had at that moment a truly Italian
consciousness and that they founded a unitary state with an appropriate
system of government. Unity was necessary for the conduct of the war.
The choice of Corfinium, the chief town of the Paeligni, was based
largely on strategic considerations, since it lay at a junction on the roads
which linked Picenum with the rebel areas to the south. A federal
assembly was instituted, consisting of a senate with 500 members, who
were the representatives of the rebel communities; although these were
grouped under the umbrella of the name Italia, as appears from their
coinage,°® they must have preserved all the traditional apparatus of self-
government. It is not clear whether within the senate at Corfinium there
was a smaller body responsible for the conduct of the war; in any case,
following the known and tried Roman model, two consuls and twelve
praetors were elected each year.5?

In 90, the two supreme commanders, who were probably also re-
elected for the following year, were the Marsian leader Poppaedius Silo
and the Samnite C. Papius Mutilus; the former had been in touch with
Drusus and had begun the rebellion, the family of the latter had already
played a leading role in the wars against Rome in the fourth century
B.c.60 The two divided the war between them: Poppaedius Silo directed
operations on the northern front, in the territory of the Piceni and the
Marsi, Papius Mutilus on the southern front, in Samnium, Lucania,

55 Vell. Pat. 11.1.2; 16.2; ef. Ovid, Am. 111.15.7-10: Gabba 1976 (c 55) 346-Go.

56 Vell, Pat. 1.27.2. 57 Strab. v.4.2; Vell.Pat. 11.16.4; Diod. xxxvir.2.6-7.

58 Sydenham 1952 (B 247) nos. 617-24 (Italia); 625-8 (Viteliu). Some coins bore the names of the
two commanders Q. Silo and C. Papius Mutilus (embratur on nos. 640-1). On nos. 619-21 there is an
oath-taking scene with eight or six soldiers, on no. 628 the Sabellian bull goring the Rome wolf.

59 Diod. xxxvut.2.4; Strab. v.4.2; Sherwin-White 1973 (F 141) 147; Meyer 1958 (C 112) 74-9.

6 Gabba 1958 (B 40) 132~4. For family continuity between the time of the Samnite Wars and the
Social War, see de Sanctis 1909 (a 103) 207ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 119g

Apulia and Campania. Each had under his orders six commanders
responsible for particular sectors. In total, the rebels were in a position to
field an army of about 100,000 men, including cavalry and infantry, in
addition to the troops which were necessary to guard the cities under
their control and whose numbers cannot readily be calculated.*! The
whole military structure which the Italian allies had placed at the disposal
of Rome was now mobilized in the cause of the rebellion. Their
experience, their military skill, their knowledge of tactics, strategy,
logistics, all these they owed to the wars fought alongside Rome.

The strategy of the rebels, which they had certainly planned before-
hand, was to take the offensive on all fronts; its central aim was the
elimination of the Latin colonies and in general the enclaves of Roman
territory within the zone controlled by themselves; for only in this way
could it become entirely self-contained. The routes which the Romans
had followed as they penetrated into enemy territory in the course of the
conquest of Italy thus acquired once again a military relevance which had
seemed to have disappeared for ever; the difference was that in this case
they could be used in the opposite direction also, against Rome,
provided the rebels could overcome the obstacles represented by the
fortified Latin colonies. Those ancient towns on the skirts of the
Apennines thus recovered their traditional function. And while in the
fourth and third centuries the Italian peoples had fought and lost, for the
most part without ever uniting, the battle might seem now to be more
equal, because the enemies of Rome were at one. But the forces of the
ruling city were enormously superior.

The troops which Rome had at her disposal at the outset were at least
equal to those of the rebels. Levies were also undertaken among Roman
citizens in Gallia Cisalpina.®? Many of the allies remained loyal; the fact
that Rome controlled not only Capua, which had the Roman citizenship,
but also central Campania as a whole, turned out to be crucial, not least
for reasons of logistics and supply. The Romans could also count on
forces supplied by allies outside Italy, such as Numidia and some eastern
communities, and by the provinces, Spain, Sicily and Gallia Cisalpina.®
It is clear that Rome’s reserves, based on her position as an imperial
power, were far superior to those of the rebels and that their effect would
have been felt fairly rapidly, even if before long the war with Mithri-
dates, which broke out at the end of 89, was to put an end to the arrival of
reinforcements from the East. Still, the rebels could always attempt to
conquer and maintain control over the whole of central and southern
Italy and on this basis impose a compromise solution; it may even be that

61 App. BCw. 1.177. 6 Appian. BCiv. 1.177; Plutarch, Ser¢. 4.1.

63 Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.90; App. BCiv.1.188-9; 220; ILS 8888 (Spain); Cicero, I] Verr. 2.5; 5.8 (Sicily);
SC de Asclepiade (RGDE no. 22), 1.7; Memnon FGrH 434 F 21 (the eastern provinces).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

120 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

this was their aim. The fragment of a speech preserved in Ad Herennium
Iv.13, and perhaps delivered in a case arising out of the Lex Varia, is
interesting in this context; the Roman politician concerned noted with
some exaggeration the disparity of the forces in the field and the
impossibility of an allied victory; and the only explanation he could find
for the Italian attempt was to suppose the complicity of politicians in
Rome.

The Roman consuls of 90, L. lulius Caesar and P. Rutilius Lupus,
probably only had at their disposal forces at the level normal for Roman
magistrates; nor indeed at the moment of their election had the war been
foreseeable. But they had access to /egati of considerable experience, first
and foremost C. Marius and L. Cornelius Sulla; other generals of
distinction emerged in the course of the war, such as Cn. Pompeius
Strabo, Q. Sertorius, Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius.

Perhaps already at the end of 91 or, if not, at the beginning of go, P.
Vettius Scato, the praetor of the Paeligni, moved from the area of
Corfinium to invest the Latin colony of Aesernia, where many Roman
refugees from Apulia had taken shelter.°5 He succeeded in defeating the
consul, L. Caesar, but not in capturing the colony; the rebels were forced
to undertake a siege, which turned out to be lengthy. At about the same
time, Marius Egnatius the Samnite succeeded in capturing Venafrum, a
Roman praefectura, and thereby prevented the despatch of reinforce-
ments from Campania to Aesernia. In Lucania, M. Lamponius, the
praetor of the Lucani, after a mixture of successes and reverses, captured
Grumentum, perhaps also a Latin colony.’ The colony of Alba Fucens
was also attacked, but not captured, although P. Praesenteius, a Marsian,
defeated P. Perperna as he attempted to move up to the relief of the city.68

But the rebels won their most important victories in Campania and in
Picenum. Moving up from the south, Papius Mutilus seized Nola and
without hesitation enlisted his Roman prisoners after killing their
officers. Advancing along the coast, he captured Herculaneum, Stabiae,
Surrentum and the citizen colony of Salernum, here also enlisting
prisoners as well as slaves.6? But although he gained control of the area
around Nuceria, he was unable to take the fortress of Acerrae, which
blocked the road to Capua, the principal Roman base on the southern
front. Meanwhile, in the first few months of the year, in the vicinity of
Falerio in Picenum, C. Vidacilius of Asculum, T. Lafrenius, the praetor
of the Piceni, and P. Ventidius had managed to defeat Cn. Pompeius
Strabo and force him to take refuge in the Latin colony of Firmum.”° The

For lists of the legates in 90 and 89, MRR u, 28 ff and 36 ff.

65 App. BCiy. 1.182; Livy Per. 72.

6 App. BCiv. 1.183; for the war in Samnium, see Salmon 1967 (A 101) 340-68.

87 App. BCiv. 1.184. 6 App. BCiv. 1.183; Livy Per. 72. 6 App. BCiv. 1.185—6.
7 App. BCiv. 1.204.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 121

way was thus open for Vidacilius to make a swift move down into
Apulia, where Canusium, the Latin colony of Venusia and other cities
went over to him or were captured; he too enlisted Romans of the lower
orders and slaves.’! The Italian armies were coming to resemble the
armies on one side in a civil war.

Aesernia and Acerrae continued to resist. The consul L. Caesar,
perhaps from a base at Teanum and crossing the range of the Matese,
attempted to relieve Aesernia, but was decisively defeated at the crossing
of the Volturnus by the Samnite Marius Egnatius and had to fall back on
Acerrae. Another attempt by Sulla to relieve Aesernia also failed, though
it did succeed in re-supplying the city. Finally, however, even this Latin
colony was forced to surrender.72

Before Acerrae, the armies of L. Caesar, reinforced by Gallic and
Numidian auxiliaries, and of Papius Mutilus, in touch with Vidacilius in
Apulia by means of the Via Appia past Aeclanum and Venusia, fought a
series of indecisive engagements.’3 Acerrae was in fact the keystone of
the Roman defence, since it ensured the maintenance of links between
Capua and the great Latin colony of Beneventum, firmly in Roman
hands. On this front, stalemate had been reached, which suggests that
the rebel offensive in Campania had run out of steam, despite its initial
successes.

There had also been fierce fighting on the central front against the
Marsi, astride the Via Valeria, which linked Rome with the capital of the
rebels at Italica-Corfinium. A measure of the importance of this area is
the presence of C. Marius, along with the consul Rutilius. Alba
continued to resist and on 11 June 90 a great battle was fought in the
valley of the River Tolenus between the two Roman generals and
Vettius Scato. Rutilius fell into an ambush at the crossing of the river and
was killed, but Marius won a decisive victory and drove back the enemy
with heavy losses.’ Not long afterwards, towards July, Q. Servilius
Caepio, who had succeeded Rutilius, along with some of his men, was
the victim of a trick played by the enemy commander-in-chief himself,
Q. Poppaedius Silo, who had pretended to surrender. Similar episodes
were no doubt not infrequent.’> Marius took over the command of the
whole front and moved energetically forward. There was a major battle
on hilly ground covered with vineyards, probably to the south of the
Fucine Lake; L. Cornelius Sulla managed to turn the flank of the enemy
and the Marsi were defeated. Among the dead was Herius Asinius, the

71 App. BCiv. 1.190.

72 App. BCiv. 1.199; Oros. v.18.16; Front. Sér. 1.5.17; Livy Per. 73. The dedication to Victory by
two Samnite magistrates in the sanctuary at Pietrabbondante is no doubt to be related to these
successes in Samnium, La Regina 1980 (B 307) 175. 73 App. BCiv. 1.188-9.

™ App. BCiv, 1.191-5; Ovid Fast. vt. 563; Oros. v.18.11~13; Livy Per. 73.
73 App. BCiv, 1.196-8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

122 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

praetor of the Marrucini.” Although the Marsi were by no means
subdued, the Roman strategy of opening a route to the Adriatic to split
the enemy in two was now apparent. Success came only in the following
year; but in this area the initiative now lay with the Roman generals, who
were in a position to mount offensives from the powerful bases under
their control.

It was probably in the same general period that Sex. Iulius Caesar set
off for the north to relieve Firmum, after a victory perhaps over the
Paeligni.’”7 As we have seen, Pompeius Strabo had retreated there, where
he had then been blockaded by T. Lafrenius. The siege lasted for some
considerable time; but a city so powerfully fortified and in such a
naturally strong position was virtually impregnable. Towards the end of
the year, perhaps in October, learning of the approach of Sex. Caesar,
Pompeius Strabo mounted two sorties. The army of T. Lafrenius was
caught between them and routed, Lafrenius himself was killed; the rebel
army took refuge in Asculum, which was now in its turn besieged by
Strabo.’8 The whole northern rebel front was in a state of collapse;
towards December, T. Vidacilius returned from Apulia to bring help to
his own city and succeeded in entering it before the siege lines were
complete.’? The siege was entrusted by the Romans to Sex. Caesar.

Just as the fortunes of war appeared to be turning in favour of the
Romans, rebel movements began in some Etruscan and Umbrian
communities, presumably not the same ones as had opposed Drusus the
year before and taken the side of Philippus. Even if the disturbances were
soon suppressed, there was for a moment the risk that a completely new
front was about to be opened along the coast north of Rome.®?

At the end to the first year of the war, the failure of the rebel cause was
already clear. It was perhaps in a moment of desperation in this phase of
the war that the Italians brought themselves to think the impossible and
open negotiations with Mithridates VI of Pontus, whom some of their
leaders will have got to know in the course of their business activities in
the eastern provinces. The king was invited to come to Italy in support
of the rebels; his reply was, not surprisingly, evasive.®!

At Rome, on the other hand, it must have become clear to everyone,
even the most rigid, that, whatever the outcome of the war in purely
military terms, there was no alternative to granting the Roman citizen-
ship to the allies, now that the Romans were faced with an armed demand
for it. In the course of a parley, one of the allied leaders had repeated yet
again that the rebels, or at any rate their leaders, were fighting in order to

% App. BCiv, t.201-3 (confused). 7 App. BCiv. 1.210; 205.

78 App. BCiv. 1.205-6; Livy Per. 74; Laffi 1975 (B 303) xxii-xxxiii. 79 App. BCiv. 1.207-8.

8 Sisenna, fre. 94-5 HRR, App. BCiv. 1.211; Livy Per. 74; Oros. v.18.17.

81 Posidonius FGrH 87 F 36; Diod. xxxvit.2.11: Gabba 1976 (c 55) 88-9. Two of the coins of the
rebels are normally related to these events: Sydenham 1952 (B 247) nos. 632 and 643.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 123

be admitted to a share in the Roman citizenship, not to bring about its
end.®2 In other words, even among the allies, it was realized that there
was no other possible outcome to the war, even if they had boosted their
morale by appeals to the notion of Italian independence. A complete
parting of the ways certainly did not now seem possible, if indeed it ever
had. The pointlessness of the war and the tragic role of the Roman
conservatives in provoking it were now clear to everyone.

It was for reasons such as these, towards October go, that the Roman
Senate, encouraged by the shift of the war in their favour, took the
initiative by granting Roman citizenship to those allies who had
remained loyal, in the first instance the Latin colonies and the other Latin
communities, and to those who had laid down their arms or were
prepared to lay them down within a specified period; the time allowed
was no doubt not long — Velleius uses the word ‘maturius’; it may be that
the condition was met principally by the Etruscans and Umbrians. Such
were the terms of the Lex Iulia de civitate, proposed by the consul L.
Iulius Caesar on the basis of a decree of the Senate.®3

Late as this measure was, it none the less removed the principal raison
d’étre of the insurrection, even if it was unable to undo all the terrible
effects of the foolish and exclusive attitude which had prevailed up to
that point; in particular, it was impossible to put an end to the war which
was now in full swing. The terms of the law were no doubt complex; in
the first place, it provided that it was for the allied communities
themselves freely to decide whether or not to accept the offer of Roman
citizenship; we hear indeed of occasional hesitations, as in the case of
Neapolis and of Heraclea in Lucania.®4 Further, the law laid down certain
basic rules governing the incorporation of the new citizens in the Roman
citizen body; at any rate for a time, they were to be placed in a number of
tribes additional to the original thirty-five, perhaps eight in number. The
plan was for these tribes to vote after the others so that their political
influence would be limited.85 The provision was probably regarded as
transitional, until it might be possible to deal with the complex process
of more or less tripling the size of the citizen body; for sucha process was
bound to have widespread implications at a local level as well as in the
centre. And the Roman state was indeed to be transformed as a result of
the process. Italy became the territory of the city of Rome as a result of

82 Cie. Phil. x11.27.

83 App. BCi. 1.212~-14; Vell. Pat. 1.16.4; Gabba 1976 (c $5) 89-96; Taylor 1960 (F 156) 101-3;
Sherwin-White 1973 (F 141) 150-3; Galsterer 1976 (A 38) 187-204; Luraschi 1978 (C 102).

84 Cic. Balb, 21.

85 App. BCiv. t.214-15; Vell. Pat. 11.20.2. lt may even be that the Lex lulia to which the decree of
Pompeius Strabo refers ([LS 8888) is different from the Lex Iulia de civitate. lt is hard to know what
the relationship is between the Lex Iulia and the Lex Calpurnia mentioned by Sisenna, fr. 120 HRR,
cf. fr. 17 HRR.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

124 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

this law and its successors; but the political and administrative articula-
tion of that territory involved a complete rethinking of the structure of
the Roman state and of how it functioned. In the immediate crisis the
passage of the law helped the Roman war effort, not least because it
created divisions and hence weaknesses within the allied communities;%¢
only the most intransigent elements could now wish the war to continue.

The rebellion in Etruria and Umbria mentioned above must have been
planned in association with the Marsi. The latter, in ignorance of the
speed with which the movement had been suppressed, set out in the
depths of winter from the basin of the Fucine Lake across the wilds of
Gran Sasso; it was probably in January of 89, in the consulship of Cn.
Pompeius Strabo and L. Porcius Cato. The intention was no doubt to
mount a massive combined operation, first to raise the siege of Asculum
and then to descend into Umbria. The Marsi were led by Vettius Scato.
But the strategy devised by the two consuls to meet the threat succeeded,
perhaps by reason of their numerical superiority. Perhaps not far from
Asculum Strabo defeated the Marsi, who were forced to undertake a
disastrous retreat across the snow-covered mountains. Cato had mean-
while taken over the command from C. Marius (we do not know why he
was excluded from the command in the second year of the war, since his
age should have been outweighed by his experience). He attacked the
Marsi in the area of the Fucine Lake and defeated them, dying however
perhaps as a result of treachery.®’ In any case the victory of Strabo was
decisive; the siege of Asculum could now take its course without any
possibility of relief from outside and the Romans were finally in a
position to attack the central nucleus of the rebels from the north. The
Marsi were finally forced to surrender; Corfinium was captured and the
seat of the Italici transferred to Bovianum; the Vestini submitted, having
failed to force the people of Pinna to abandon their alliance with Rome;
likewise the Marrucini, perhaps after a final attempt at resistance.88

Towards the end of the summer of 89 the rebellion in the northern and
central areas was for all practical purposes over, from Picenum to the
borders of Samnium; only Asculum still held out, urged on by the heroic
energy of Vidacilius.

In the south also, in 89, the Romans moved over to the offensive,
under the able leadership of Sulla. His army, with Cicero in its ranks, had
been reinforced by a legion of loyal Hirpini, raised by Minatius Magius
of Aeclanum; he was also supported by a fleet. While he was besieging
Pompeii, L. Cluentius came to its relief and won a short-lived success
before being defeated between Nola and Pompeii. The Roman siege of
Nola was to continue for a long time still, while that of Pompeii now

86 App. BCw. 1.213. 87 App. BCiv. 1.216-17; Laffi 1975 (B 303) xxx—xxxii.
88 App. BCiv. 1.227; Diod xxxvit.2.9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 125

came rapidly to an end. Stabiae fell on 30 April and Herculaneum on 11
June.8° Sulla was now in a position to move against the Hirpini and
attack Aeclanum, where the anti-Roman party now evidently had the
upper hand. Lucanian reinforcements under Lamponius and Ti. Clep-
pius were slow to arrive; the city, inadequately protected by a wooden
palisade (stone walls were only built after the war), surrendered and the
whole area of the Hirpini followed suit; it was let off lightly by Sulla,
who lost no time in attacking the heart of Samnium. He set off on a long
circular march, which brought him into the north of the region, contrary
to the expectations of Papius Mutilus, who was defeated not far from
Aesernia, escaping thither with a few of his troops.®! Sulla moved on to
Bovianum, whither the rebel government had been transferred, and
managed to take it after a short, but bitter, struggle. The capital was
moved once again, this time to Aesernia. All these victories over the
Samnites will have taken place between July and September of 89;
towards October of that year, Sulla went to Rome to stand in the
elections for the consulship, succeeding along with Q. Pompeius
Rufus.%

A consequence of the victories of Pompeius Strabo over the peoples
along the coast of the Adriatic was the defeat or submission of the
peoples of Apulia. After a phase of the war which remains obscure to us,
but which saw the defeat and death of the Samnite Marius Egnatius,
operations were conducted for the Romans by C. Cosconius. He came
down the coast from the north, took Salapia and Cannae and besieged
Canusium; a first encounter with the Samnite Trebatius resulted in
defeat; but soon after he won a victory on the River Aufidus and
Trebatius took refuge in Canusium. The people of Larinum surrendered
immediately, along with Ausculum, the Poediculi and then Venusia, this
last to the praetor Q. Caecilius Metellus; Metellus then went on to
complete the submission of lapygia with a victory over Q. Poppaedius
Silo, who had retreated to that area after the collapse of the northern
front. The rebel leader died in the battle.

A few minor strongholds still held out, along with Asculum, defended
by Vidacilius. The uselessness of the struggle should have been appar-
ent; but he took steps to bring about the deaths of his political enemies as
an act of revenge and then committed suicide; the surrender of the city
followed soon after, in November 89. The well-known decree of
Pompeius Strabo granting the Roman citizenship to a troop of Spanish

8° App. BCiv. i.227; Cic. Div. 1.72; Plut. Cie. 3.2 (Cicero in the army of Sulla); Vell. Pat. 1.16.2
(Minatius Magius); Pliny HN 111.70 (Stabiae); Ovid Fast. v1.567-8 (Herculaneum).

® App. BCiv. 1.222-3; Diod. xxxvi.2.11. 1 App. BCw, 1.223-4.

92 App. BCiv. 1.223-5; La Regina 1966 (B 187); also in 1980 (B 307) 30-3.

53 App. BCw. 1.227—-30; Livy Per. 75.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

126 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

horsemen is dated 17 November; his triumph fell on 2; December.
With the fall of Asculum, where the rebellion had begun two years
earlier, the military failure of the allies was complete; but the victors had
in fact had to recognize and accept precisely those demands of the allies
for which they had fought and lost.

During 89, another law dealing with the citizenship had been passed,
the Lex Plautia Papiria, in order to carry to completion the incorporation
of the allies into the Roman state. It was proposed by the tribunes M.
Plautius Silvanus, who had earlier succeeded in putting an end to the
activities of the ‘quaestio ex lege Varia’, and C. Papirius Carbo. Much is
uncertain, but it is likely that various references in our sources are to be
ascribed to this law; they are located close to the end of the war and relate
to the acceptance in general of the allies into the Roman citizenship, with
a few particular exceptions, notably the Samnites and the Lucanians.%
Only one clause is specifically attributed to the Lex Plautia Papiria (and
some think that that is all it contained); it provided for the extension of
Roman citizenship to those who were adscripti in an allied community,
i.e. had received its citizenship in an honorary capacity, were domiciled
in Italy at the moment of the passage of the law, and made application to
the urban praetor within sixty days. It is likely, however, that while this
provision covered adscripti in allied communities domiciled in Italy and
was cited by Cicero precisely in this context, other chapters dealt with.a
more general grant of citizenship, leaving out only the Samnites and
Lucanians who were still intransigently under arms. (It is above all
because of them that the Social War merged into the civil war that
followed.) Meanwhile, the Lex Plautia Papiria probably left the detailed
application of its provisions to be settled by decrees of the Senate, some
of which are mentioned in the historical tradition; the reason was no
doubt that that was the only way to organize the rapid acquisition of the
right to vote by the new citizens.

Still within 89, an equally important law emanating from the consul
Pompeius Strabo organized the incorporation of the allied communities
north of the Po, and perhaps also of some Ligurian tribes south of the
river. Some of the peoples involved had taken part in the Social War on
one side or the other, as we have seen. All of them were granted the status
of Latin colonies, without any introduction of colonists from outside;
and they were all granted the right for their magistrates to acquire the
Roman citizenship. The process by which local institutions were
moulded into Roman ones was a long one and it was certainly not
complete by 49, when all these communities received full Roman
citizenship. It is possible that the Lex Pompeia also provided that some

™ App. BCry. 1.209-10; ILS 8888; Inser. Ital. xitt.1. pp. 85 and 563.
9S App. BCiv. 1.231; Vell. Pat. 1.17.1 and 20.2; Schol. Bob. 175 st. % Cic. Arch. 7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR 127

of the less civilized tribes of the Alpine foothills should be attributed to
the nearest cities of the plain. It is in any case clear that the Lex Pompeia
set on foot in Transpadane Gaul a process of Romanization and
urbanization which succeeded in grafting itself on to the existing
structures of Celtic society.%

One problem demands particular attention. The extension of the
Roman citizenship to the whole of Italy, from the straits of Messina to
the Po, meant a complete transformation of the territorial organization
of the Roman state, and its reorganization on the basis of the munictpia,
the internal subdivisions of the Roman state, into which the former Latin
colonies and allied communities were now transformed. The
Roman state in fact ceased to be a city state and became a state made up of
numerous municipia, at any rate as far as the organization of its territory
was concerned; political institutions remained for all practical purposes
unchanged.

It is generally believed, probably rightly, that general rules were laid
down for the government and administration of the new municipia,
perhaps based on earlier constitutions prescribed for Latin colonies. For
example, criteria for the inclusion of the new citizen-communities in the
tribes, once their concentration in a number of supplementary tribes had
been abandoned, will have been laid down, or at least indicated or
suggested; those criteria will have been influenced by local political
considerations. In many cases, the territories of the new municipia will
also have been fixed; that will have been a complex process, since it is
clear that in some cases existing tribal communities were split into more
than one #municipium, perhaps sometimes as a punishment; that process
will have been particularly common in Transpadane Gaul. There will
also have been general criteria for the selection of the urban seats of
government of the municipia; and a process of urbanization will have
begun even where it had not occurred or even begun before.*8 Paradoxi-
cally, the destruction wrought by the Social War will have favoured this
development. In some cases, specially in Transpadane Gaul, the grant of
Roman or Latin citizenship will have involved survey and division of the
land, indispensable for the definition of the social structure of the new
community.” We know that envoys of the Roman government were
entrusted with the constitution of the new municipia;!© they will often
have been people who already had a local reputation and power base,
though of course perceived as politically reliable by Rome; in some cases,
in their capacity as envoys of Rome, they will have formed part of the

97 Asc. 2-3C; Pliny HN m1.138; it seems to me that the episode at Milan recorded by Frontinus,
St. 1.9.3. is to be placed in the context of these activities of Strabo, Gabba 1984 (c 59).

98 Gabba 1983 (C $8) on Vit. 1.4.11-12. % Gabba 1985 (G 94) 279-83

100 Note, for example, Caes. BCiv. 1.15.2, on Labienus at Cingulum.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

128 4. ROME AND ITALY: THE SOCIAL WAR

first college of local magistrates, nominated by the central power or by its
representatives, not elected.!°! In some cases, such envoys were author-
ized to modify, at their discretion and in the light of local conditions and
without reference to Rome, the text of the municipal charter, based on
the general rules laid down in measures passed through the Roman
assemblies.1°

It took a long time to incorporate everyone into the structure of the
Roman state, from 89 to the age of Caesar; but the general outlines of the
process to be followed must have been fixed immediately after the Social
War; and it cannot be excluded that it was precisely the Lex Plautia
Papiria (or some other law passed not long afterwards, perhaps under
Sulla) which included the provisions relevant to the process, just as the
earlier Lex Julia had already included some provisions governing the
actual exercise of the right to vote.103

101 Cicero, C/u. 25; Lex municipii Tarentini 7-14 (Bruns no. 27).

102 Tabula Heracleensis, 159—Go (Bruns no. 18); Gabba 1985 (G 94) 279-83. Similarities even
between the fragmentary texts in our possession of municipal and colonial charters in the first

century B.C. suggest common models at least for some elements.
103 Galsterer 1976 (G 96) insists rather on the spontancous aspects of the process.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTERS5

MITHRIDATES

JOHN G. F. HIND

Mithridates VI Eupator ‘the Great’ was to become a byword for his
hatred of Rome and his atrocities in Asia. At the end of his life, in 63 B.c.,
rumour had it that he was still planning to march on Italy, like an eastern
Hannibal, via Scythia, Thrace and the Illyrians. Many myths arose about
him during his fifty-seven-year reign and his more than forty years of
confrontation with Rome. By the end of the Roman Empire he was one
of her few former enemies, alongside Pyrrhus, Hannibal and Cleopatra,
to be canonized among the eighty notable ancient Romans.! As one who
died aged sixty-nine (some said seventy or seventy-two), he almost
qualified to be one of the ‘Macrobioi’, the ‘long-lived’, of the ancient
world. During all but his first thirteen years of life he ruled a kingdom,
Pontus, which took its name from the ‘Deep Sea’ itself. It lay almost
beyond the world known to Rome, and had beneath its sway Thracians,
Scythians, Sarmatians, the Cimmerian Bosporus and Colchis, the legend-
ary land of gold, poisons and witchcraft. The king himself was
immensely gifted as well as resourceful. He was said to speak twenty-
two, twenty-five, fifty languages; and during his ‘heroic’ first seven years
as king, as a fugitive in the interior of Pontus, he had trained his physique
to great endurance and to a high resistance to poisons:

He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,

He sampled all her killing store;

— I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.?

He bore a noble Persian name, and his family claimed descent from either
Darius himself or one of his associates in the rebellion against the Median

1 De Vir. Il. 76. See already Cic. Mur. 32 and a couple of generations later Vell. Pat. 11.18, cf. go
on his international standing.

2 A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, 62. Languages: Val. Max. vitt.7; Pliny HN vir.88; xxv.6;
Gell. NA xvut.17; Poisons: Just. xxxvu.3; App. Mita. 111; Pliny HN xxv.z.5.

129

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

130 §. MITHRIDATES

Magi. Small wonder that, in Persian-Parthian fashion, he claimed at the
height of his success to be “Great King’ and ‘King of Kings’.

The extant ancient sources for Mithridates and his kingdom are
numerous, and varied in length and detail. Some fifty ancient writers
contribute, ranging from fragments of works by his courtiers and by
contemporary scholars to late Roman breviaria and vitae which derive
much of their material from the now lost books of Livy. Our fullest
sources are works of the first and second centuries A.D. Plutarch’s Life of
Sullaand Appian’s Mithridatica provide overlapping narratives in Greek,
and Strabo’s Geography and Memnon’s local history of Heraclea on the
Black Sea add circumstantial detail about Pontus and about events in the
Mithridatic Wars. Latin sources offer less, though Justin’s Epitome of the
World History of Pompeius Trogus (first century B.C.) traces the rise of
Pontus under Mithridates’ father and the growth of tension in Asia
between Mithridates and the Roman governors. But it was the speeches
of Cicero — pro Flacco, pro Murena, pro lege Manilia — that moulded
posterity’s view of the monarch as the recidivist enemy of Rome and
perpetrator of the Asiatic atrocities.

I. THE DYNASTY

Mithridates was reckoned sixteenth in descent from Darius (though the
claim may have been manufactured in the first century B.c.).4 The direct
line can be traced only from the fourth century. A Mithridates inherited
from his father Ariobarzanes (¢. 362-337) a little fief at Cius, and perhaps
Myrlea, to the west of Bithynia on the Propontis, as a dependency of
Darius III, the last Achaemenid king of Persia. He lost, then recovered,
his position, and eventually was ‘liberated’ by Alexander the Great. Fora
time he was a vassal of Antigonus Monophthalmus, but was killed by
him for treating with Cassander in 302 B.c.5
The son of Mithridates of Cius, also a Mithridates, later surnamed

Ktistes, ‘founder’, escaped eastwards. With six horsemen he entered
Paphlagonia, first reaching Cimiata in the Amnias valley; later he moved
further east to Amasia in Pontic Cappadocia. If this second move took
place in 297 B.C. it would help to explain the era of Pontus, which dated
from that year (though it may have been a court fiction of later
Mithridatid date designed to give Pontus an era equal to that of
Bithynia).° After the defeat and death of Lysimachus at Corupedium, in

3 Sources chronologically arranged: Greenidge—Clay, 5 5f. Discussion of the sources: Reinach 1890
(D 55) 417755; Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 116-18; McGing 1986 (D 35) 176~9. Footnote references
are not given to the main narratives. 4 Meyer 1878 (D 38) 31-8.

5 For the dynasty at Cius: McGing 1986 (D 35) 13-15.

6 Pontic era: Dieh! 1938 (D 12) 1850; Robert 1937 (B 229) 231; Perl 1968 (D 5 3) 299; Bickermann
1980 (A 11) 72.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DYNASTY 131

the wake of successes won by the northern states of Cius, Tium and
Bithynia, this Mithridates warred against Seleucus I and secured his
independence. In 281/o B.c. he took the title ‘King’ of a state which
comprised eastern Paphlagonia and northern Cappadocia,’ and along
with Nicomedes of Bithynia he settled Gaulish tribes in parts of eastern
Phrygia, which came to be known as Galatia. In 279 Amastris, a coastal
city on the western border of Paphlagonia, was acquired for him by his
son from its ruler Eumenes. Mithridates’ kingdom now reached to the
river Sangarius in the west; well might he be called ‘Founder’ and be our
choice as the first Mithridates of the dynasty which was to number six of
that name, and eight kings overall, in 218 years down to the death of
Eupator, 281-63 B.c.8

The next kings, Ariobarzanes (266-¢. 250) and Mithridates (¢. 250—
189) had respectively a short and a very long reign, if the latter was not
actually two kings (Mithridates II and III). The former added Amisus on
the Black Sea to the kingdom; the latter formed a marriage alliance with
Seleucus II by taking Seleucus’ sister Laodice as his wife and receiving as
her dowry Phrygia Maior. However he failed in an attempt to take
Sinope by siege.

Pharnaces, king ¢. 189-¢. 159, pressed upon the coastal cities and his
neighbours to the west more ambitiously than his predecessors. He was
successful in overmastering Sinope, ¢c. 182 B.C., holding on to it even
after a war with Eumenes of Pergamum and Ariarathes of Cappadocia,
though he had to submit to the loss of some recent gains in Paphlagonia
and Galatia; a Roman senatorial commission acted as ‘honest broker’
between the kings in these years after the Roman defeat of Antiochus III
at Apamea. The commissioners were careful to rein back Pharnaces from
western Asia Minor, barring him from the small city of Tium, but they
were neglectful of the more remote Sinope. Pharnaces then took Cotyora
and Cerasus (Pharnacia), former colonies of Sinope even further east,
and he secured the overlordship of Armenia Minor, with its city of
Trapezus, when the king, another Mithridates, handed it over to him.°
His strengthened hold on his own coastline was matched by a vigorous
policy embracing all the shores of the Black Sea: he had treaties with
Odessus on the west (Bulgarian) coast and with Chersonesus in the south
Crimea.!° Towards the end of his life Pharnaces cemented a friendship

7 Syncellus 523.5.

8 Sources for Mithridates of Cius and Mithridates Ktistes probably go back to Hieronymus of
Cardia (App. Mitd. 8). Rostovtzeff thought Mithridates of Cius was the first of the Pontic dynasty,
CAH 1x! 217-18, but the prevailing view treats Ktistes as the first: Reinach, 1890 (p 55) 7-8; Molyev
1985 (D 43); McGing 1986 (D 35) 15-19; 1986 (D 34) 250-3; Molyev 1983 (D 42a).

9 It reverted to independence later, but the pantomime of ‘voluntary submission’ was to be
repeated under Mithridates the Great.

10 Strab. xi1.3.11, 16; Polyb. xx1i1.9; XxXIV.1.14; XXV.2; XXVIL.17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

132 5. MITHRIDATES

with the Seleucids by marrying Nysa, a daughter or granddaughter of
Antiochus III. On his death, ¢. 159, Pontus was an important power in
Asia Minor, though a combination of local kings could still counter it
and it could not stand up to Roman diplomacy or threats of force.!!

Under the successors of Pharnaces, Mithridates Philopator Philadel-
phus, perhaps his younger brother, and Mithridates Euergetes, probably
his son, the kingdom prospered through calculated docility to Rome.
The former is known from an inscription on the Capitol, where alliance
with the Roman people is mentioned:!? also a king Mithridates is said to
have aided Attalus IT of Pergamum against Prusias II of Bithynia in 15 5/4
B.c., and may well have been Philopator Philadelphus. There are also
splendid portrait coins, whose reverses have legends in his own name
and that of his sister Laodice, and show statues of Perseus and of Zeus
and Hera, hinting at the dynasty’s Persian origins and the elevated
position of the brother-—sister rulers.'3 On any reckoning Philopator’s
reign can only have been short (¢. 159 to 151/o).

He was succeeded by Mithridates Euergetes, who had another
Laodice as his queen, the mother of Mithridates the Great. He helped
Rome in the Third Punic War, ¢. 149, and, after the death of Attalus ITI,
helped Rome again during the revolt of Aristonicus (ch. 2, p. 34).'4
Rome dispensed bounty, in the form of other people’s property, to her
allies in the Asian war: to Mithridates were allowed the long-claimed
lands of Phrygia Maior (a huge bribe having been paid, it was said, to the
Roman commander, M’. Aquillius). Euergetes also secured, separately,
Inner Paphlagonia, as heir of its king, Pylaemenes, and Galatia: both had
been targets for the ambitions of Pharnaces. And when he married his
daughter, yet another Laodice, to Ariarathes VI of Cappadocia he gained
an interest there too, even ‘invading it as though it were a foreign
country’ (although the circumstances are unclear).'5 During this time,
some eleven years before his father’s death, Mithridates Eupator was
born, at Sinope.

Whether at the instance of some pro-Roman faction disturbed at his
over-mighty role among his neighbours, or as a result of a palace plot,
Euergetes was assassinated at Sinope.!6 Pontus thereupon, frome. 121/o,

" JOSPE 1 402; Minns 1913 (D 39) no. 172; Sherk 1984 (B 239) 30; Kolobova 1949 (D 27); Molyev
1976 (D 41) 12-17; Burstein 1980 (D 256) 1-12; McGing 1986 (D 35) 24-34.

'2 OGIS 375; Mellor 1978 (B 202).

3 Polyb. xxxutt.12; Habicht 1956 (D 269) 101-10; coins: Waddington 1925 (B 253) 13, NO. 7;
Seltman 1955 (B 237) Pl.uvi, 10 and Lv, 1; Kraay—Hirmer 1966 (B 182) 376-7 and Pl.z1o.

14 App. Mith.1o makes Euergetes the first king of Pontus to be a ‘Friend of the Roman People’: if
he is not identical with Philopator Philadelphus that must be a mistake. It is just possible that they
are identical and that Mithridates V was Chrestus, Eupator’s brother (see below). For Euergetes:
Reinach 1890 (p 55) 42-7; Geyer 1932 (D 16) no. 11; Magie 1950 (a 67) 194f; Thompson 1961 (B 249)
422f (but dating the Mithridates—Aristion coins too early).

'S App. Mith.10; Just. xxxvIl.1.4; XXXVII. 5.4. 16 Strab. x.4.10; Memnon FGrH 434 22.2F.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE KINGDOM 133

underwent a period of weakness, with Laodice ruling in the name of her
two sons Eupator and Chrestus, both minors. She pursued a philo-
Roman policy, but from a far weaker position than her husband. In 119
or 116 Rome withdrew Phrygia Maior from Laodice’s Pontus, thus
nullifying the fruits of the bribe to Aquillius and nurturing resentment
among Pontic patriots for the future.'” Soon it became clear that Laodice
sided with her younger son, Chrestus: indeed, for a few years he may
have been regarded as the reigning Mithridates, and Laodice may have
ruled through him. Eupator is now said to have escaped from a
suspicious riding accident; and the great romantic episode now follows
(perhaps part of the later Mithridates-myth): he retired secretly to the
mountains of eastern Pontus and Armenia Minor, moving ever on from
day to day, building up his resistance to poisons and his physical
endurance, and getting to know many of the peoples of Pontus and their
languages. The period was said to have lasted seven years, though the
figure may be conventional, even magical, and represent the ideal
education of an Iranian prince.!8 Finally, ¢. 113 (according to the date
most scholars have deduced from Appian and Justin: perhaps in fact a
few years earlier) Eupator returned to Sinope and overturned affairs at
the court, throwing Laodice into prison, but allowing his brother to
continue as a colleague without the title of king!® for some while, before
in the end, at an unknown date (though after 115), he was put to death.

II. THE KINGDOM

The proper name of Mithridates Eupator’s kingdom was ‘Cappadocia by
the Euxine’ or ‘Cappadocia by Pontus’, in distinction to the inland
region of ‘Cappadocia by Taurus’ or “Greater Cappadocia’.2° This
coastal, northern region grew to be much the more prosperous,
possessing fertile areas in the major river valleys behind the coast
(Amnias, Iris, Lycus) while politically centred on the Greek cities of the
southern shore of the Black Sea, first Amastris and then Amisus and
Sinope.2! To the west lay relatively minor states, Paphlagonia, Tium and
the strong city state of Heraclea. Inland to the south-west were Phrygia
Maior and Phrygia Epictetus and the three tribes of the Gauls. Directly
south lay the related and extensive, but economically weak, kingdom of
(Greater) Cappadocia. Eastward was Armenia Minor, and along the
coast beyond Trapezus were the principalities of the Colchians; and
around the further shores of the Black Sea were Greek cities struggling
to maintain their independence against Thracians, Getae and Scythians.

17 OGIS 436. Date: Glew 1977 (p 18) 388f; Sherwin-White 1977 (D 75) 70; 1984 (D 291) 96.

18 Widengren 1960 (D 83). 19 [Délos 1560-1. 20 Polyb. v.43.1; Strab. xi.1.4.
21 Magie 1950 (A 67) 177-86; McGing 1986 (Dp 35) 2-10.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

134

8007 ‘ssoFg ANsIoATUE) OSpaquiey © UIUC sovoIsTp] osprquie;y

voly Wuog ay, FY

vilvivo we VINAHLIG
SNLINOd rm

ezA
snzedes snsiwiy eaj2es8H NnuezAg

tun

VINOOVTHdvVd

sujsewy

es SISGUdgs
* e1uoj|ody

, equasey
“.. \seunosoig

snssepof,

wi Ssnsauessayy
{3h \
wnioejeg 2
: eisopoa wo \situiase5
IVLIVOL & siodeen \

winaedesiGeg N wngeus =
tga F yvi"s uawul] sojey

i uyVvaNnva
: : JVH
!HISOa L) f niosea 7

i eSBJAL
ISSISd i snped

3101 0 |: . :
1 IFILVHEL 5 : a
“1001 b + : . : JIVNYVLSVEG
vorGes UeaWHD au) ae ae i I F
jo Sanbuoo,salepuyWw c—— oe . z

THE KINGDOM 13

Only Armenia Maior, in the wider arc of Anatolia, might have been a
rival to Pontus, and its period of greatness was still to come, under king
Tigranes, ¢. 83-65 B.C.; this coincided with Mithridates Eupator’s own
collapse at the end of the first war with Rome and lasted until the end of
their joint resistance in the third war. Since the Peace of Apamea Rome
had been the ‘Cloud in the West’, which Hellenistic kings had to keep a
weather eye on. It had loomed closer with the annexation of Pergamum
as the ‘province of Asia’ after 129 and Rome’s further intervention in the
form of consular appointments to Cilicia and Lycaonia, certainly by 102
and possibly as early as 116.22 Mithridates Euergetes had been very
circumspect in his dealings with Rome, and so was Eupator, who waited
twenty-three years before being pushed into war with Rome.

Mithridates’ ancestral kingdom was not large, but had economic,
military and naval potential.23 Pontus is a land of east-west mountain
ranges and river valleys. The latter, running parallel to the shore of the
Black Sea at a distance of 110 to 160 kilometres, were the heartland of the
kingdom; as for the mountains, south of Cotyora and Cerasus they reach
3,000 metres and further east toward Trabzon and Rize 4,000.24 There
was a north-south route from Amisus to Tarsus via Amasia and Zela in
Pontus and Mazaca and Tyana in Cappadocia — an ancient route that
linked the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, mentioned by Herodo-
tus.25 The only other real north-south route ran from Trapezus in
Colchis south-west over the Zigana Pass and then south-eastwards into
the valley of the river Acampsis: it was the path taken — in reverse — by
Xenophon in the Anabasis.%6

Pontus was rich in minerals. Iron and silver were mined near the coast
south of Pharnacia, the fabled source of ‘Chalybian steel’. Studies of the
mineral resources of modern Turkey have stressed the concentration of
metalworking in north-eastern Pontus. There are also copper, lead, zinc,
arsenic, and ruddle (for painting ships), found especially inland of
Sinope.?7

The climate of the Pontic coast is much less harsh than that of inland
Cappadocia, and it is the best-watered part of Asia Minor, the Pontine
mountains in the east ensuring that more of the precipitation is deposited
at that end of the coastal strip. The consequence is a splendid forest
growth, ever denser towards the east — oaks, alders, beeches, chestnuts

22 Syme 1939 (D 294); Sherwin-White 1976 (D 74); 1984 (D 291) 97-101.

23 Geography: Ramsay 1890 (A 94); Anderson, Cumont and Grégoire 1910 (B 131); Maximova
1956 (D 37) 13-31, Weimert 1984 (p 82).

24 G. Williams, Eastern Turkey (London, 1972); Calder and Bean 1958 (D 257).

25 Hdt. 1.72. 26 Other routes: Munro 1901 (D 45); Winfield 1977 (D 85).

27. C. W. Ryan, A Guide to the known Minerals of Turkey (Ankara, 1960); P. de Jesus, Prehistoric
Mining and Metallurgy in Anatolia, BAR S.74, 1980; R. F. Tylecote, ‘Ironsands from the Black Sea’,
AS 31 (1981) 187-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

136 §. MITHRIDATES

and walnuts, with above them coniferous forests and below them many
species of fruit tree, including the cherry, which takes its name from
Cerasus, the plum, pear, apricot and apple. The region was famed for
ship-timbers, and the fleet of classical Sinope, the very large Pontic fleet
of the Mithridatids, and the later Roman Black Sea fleet based at
Trapezus, all had a ready supply. Olive-growing produced a vigorous
trade in Sinopian oil and a pottery industry making amphorae in which
to export it. On some of the coastal plains, e.g. Themiscyra, and in the
Iris—Lycus valleys horses were grazed in great numbers and sheep and
cattle pastured.28

The organization of Pontus as observable under its last two kings,
Mithridates the Great and his son Pharnaces II, reflects the geographical,
climatic and ethnic facts and the historical traditions of the region. On
the Black Sea coast the Greek cities had councils, assemblies and
magistracies, some by long tradition, such as Sinope and Amisus, others
as a result of re-foundation on the Greek pattern, such as Amastris (by
Amastris the daughter of Oxyathres) in the late fourth century or
Pharnacia (by Pharnaces I). Sinope and Amisus were chosen by Phar-
naces I, Euergetes and Mithridates the Great to be their capitals and were
adorned with public buildings accordingly: Sinope was also the site of
the tombs of these later Mithridatids.2° The major inland centres were
much more Paphlagonian or Cappadocian in character, with an Iranian
aristocracy going back three or four hundred years. The most important
were in the fertile Iris—Lycus valleys. Amasia on the river Iris was the old
capital from before the time of Pharnaces I and the resting-place of four
earlier kings, with an uncompleted fifth tomb perhaps intended for
Pharnaces.39 The region to the west of Amasia was called Chiliocomum,
‘The Thousand Villages’, which gives a hint as to the source of the city’s
wealth. Strabo was proud of his Amasian origin.3! But there were other
rich areas: Phanaroea east of Amasia, on the river Lycus, Dazimonitis to
the south on the upper Iris, and Phazimonitis north of Amasia between
the Halys and the Iris. In the time of Mithridates Eupator Pontus was
divided into eparchies, perhaps governed by sfrategoi, and there may
have been subdivisions called hyparchies. Nobles of Iranian ancestry
ruled some localities from their castles: the villages under their control
could be very numerous for, while Chiliocomum’s thousand is unlikely
to have been literal, L. Murena, in his brief campaign into Pontus, is
reported to have overrun four hundred ‘villages’. The political centre of
the economic heart of Pontus was clearly Amasia. Its central area was
garrisoned under a phrourarchos, usually a eunuch, in charge of entry into

28 Strab. x11.3.11-go.

29 Rostovtzeff 1932 (D G1) 212-13; 219-20; MOll 1984 (D 44); Olshausen and Biller 1984 (D 51);
Robinson 1906 (p 56); 1905 (B 233). %© Rostovtzeff 1932 (D 61) 218.

31 Strab. x11.3.39-41; Lomouri 1979 (D 31).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MITHRIDATES’ BLACK SEA EMPIRE 137

the citadel:32 there was a royal palace and a temple to Zeus Stratios, a
Hellenized form of the Iranian Ahuramazda, chief protector of the
dynasty.

In addition to the royal towns, forts and treasuries and the castles of
the Pontic nobility, another major characteristic of inland Pontus, as of
southern Cappadocia, was the temple estates, drawing revenue from
huge areas. Ameria, near Cabira, was a ‘comopolis’, a ‘village-city’,
dedicated to the divinity Mén Pharnacou: near Pontic Comana was
another temple-town dedicated to the goddess Ma; and to the south-
west, near Zela, was a temple of the Iranian Anaitis. They were served by
priests, temple slaves or serfs: many of the females were temple
prostitutes. Comana channelled trade to and from Armenia: Strabo calls
it an emporion, and it was bustling with soldiers and merchants, not the
least of its attractions being the temple establishment of 6,000 sacred
slaves.

The chief deities of Pontus all have a syncretistic (mixed) aspect to
them. There were Paphlagonian (at Sinope) and Cappadocian (former
Hittite?) native elements, overlaid by ‘magian’ and other Iranian ele-
ments dating from the Achaemenid Persian period. These had been
reinterpreted in Greek guise and with Greek names during the period of
formation of Pontus as a kingdom. Hence Ahuramazda (Persian ‘Sun’)
was addressed as Zeus Stratios at Amasia. Mén at Ameria, the great
moon-god, was given the Iranian title Pharnacou. Ma of Comana was
equated with Rhea/Cybele, the ‘Great Mother’. In view of the important
role played by the cults of Zeus Stratios and Mén Pharnacou in the
official ritual of the Pontic dynasty, it is not unreasonable to connect
these sun and moon deities with the ‘star and crescent’ badge of Pontus
and its ruling family.3

III. MITHRIDATES’ BLACK SEA EMPIRE

With the accession of Mithridates Eupator a period of vigorous
assertiveness began. He championed Hellenic and Iranian elements alike
against a Roman influence which, even in the province of Asia, had roots
only fifteen years deep; but his anti-Roman sentiment, fuelled by the
retraction of the grant of Phrygia Maior, was probably not yet as
overriding as his Iranian and Seleucid pride. His ambition was to achieve
great things amongst his regal peers. Among his friends from childhood
were an elite group of syntrophoi: for his wider ventures beyond Pontus
he needed the help of such a trusted set, some of whom were Greeks
from Sinope and Amisus.

Mithridates’ first move, probably, was to accept a hegemony over

32 OGIS 365; Anderson, Cumont and Grégoire 1910 (B 131) nos. 66; 94; 95a; 200; 228.
33 Strab. x11.3.32~7; x11.3.31; App. Mith. 66, 70.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8007 ‘sseg AisIIATU_ aSpiquIKD © sUTTUO saoIstp aspuquie;

JoUIp Bisy $

SANIXNG SNLINOGd

MITHRIDATES’ BLACK SEA EMPIRE 139

Armenia Minor from its king, Antipater, perhaps ¢. 115-114 B.C.
(though some scholars think as late as 106): and the next gain will have
been Colchis. Only Strabo and Memnon mention the annexation, and
they give no date, Strabo merely linking it with Armenia Minor and
Memnon making it fall to Mithridates early in his career of expansion:
some date it before, and some after, the campaigns in the Crimea.*4 It was
certainly subject to Mithridates by 89, for it was mentioned as one of his
possessions in Pelopidas’ speech on behalf of his master to the Roman
generals at the start of the first Roman war. The land was a useful
addition, with alluvial gold, honey, wax, flax, hemp and timber; it was
also the western end of an important trade route to the Caspian, up the
Phasis and down the Cyrus rivers, and a vital land and coastal sailing link
with the Cimmerian Bosporus. Mithridates’ domination of Colchis was
the long-term end of the process of economic and cultural penetration of
the eastern shore of the Black Sea achieved by Greek cities such as Sinope
as early as the fifth century B.c.; and now those well-tried connexions,
plus the growing reputation of Mithridates and his generals, attracted an
appeal from Chersonesus, across the narrow waist of the Black Sea.

Chersonesus appealed, at some date between 114 and 110B.c. (perhaps
113),°5 to Mithridates as its only source of aid. Sinope was now the
capital of Pontus, while Heraclea, the mother-city of Chersonesus, was
no longer equal to the task of sending troops against her colony’s
enemies, the Scythians and the Tauri of the steppeland and piedmont
parts of the Crimea. The call was answered with an expedition of 6,000
Pontic troops under Mithridates’ general Diophantus,** and subse-
quently with two further expeditions; after several major campaigns
against the Scythians in the steppelands north of Chersonesus and the
crushing of a rebellion by one Saumacus in Panticapaeum on the
Bosporus, Mithridates was master of all the Crimean region. He later
developed links in the north-west and west of the Black Sea, where we
hear of military aid to Olbia and Apollonia. Thus, in a decade or so,
Mithridates had converted the whole of the Sea (Pontus) into a lake
dependent on the kingdom (Pontus), and had unified politically the
complementary economic elements of the various shores, which had
been tending towards a unity for 300 years.3’7 Only the mountainous

34 Strab, x1.2.17,18; x11.3.1; Memnon FGrH 34 223F. Colchis before Crimea: most lately Molyev
1976 (D 41) 24-8; Shelov 1980 (p 71). First coins of Eupator from Dioscurias dated ¢. 105-90 B.C.,
Dundua and Lordkipanidze (p 14); Todua 1990 (D 778) 48-39.

35 Date: Niese 1887 (D 48); Vinogradov (p 78) 644-5. Some prefer 111/10 B.c. Tauri and
Scythians: Leskov 1965 (p 28);.Savelya (p 66); Sheglov (p 68); Solomonnik 1952 (D 774) 116-17;
Schultz 1971 (p 67); Vysotskaya 1972 (D 80); 1975 (D 81).

3% The main sources for all these campaigns are Strab. vii.3.17; 4.3 and 7 the great ‘Diophantus-
Inscription’, [OSPE 1.352; SEG xxx, 963. See Minns 1913 (D 39) 582-91; Molyev 1976 (D 41) 28-43;
CAH vi?, ch. 1.

7 I[OSPE 1.226; IGBulg 12.392; Shelov 1985 (D 72), and 1986 (D 73) 36-42; Vinogradov 1989 (p>
78A) 257-62.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

140 5. MITHRIDATES

Caucasus coast, with its unruly piratical tribes, the Achaei, Heniochi and
Zygi, remained outside Mithridates’ bidding, but even they normally let
him pass if he was on his way through with an army. Still independent, to
the west and in the direction of the Roman province of Asia, were
Heraclea Pontica and the kingdom of Bithynia, centred on the
Propontis.

Prolific coinages are an index of the prosperity of Mithridates’
kingdom at this time. The bronze coins are of a number of standard
types, some referring to the dynasty, such as the head of Perseus, and
most having on the obverse heads of the major Greek deities and their
attributes. They were struck in some thirteen mint centres in Paphlago-
nia and Pontus, and one or two related types were struck also on the
Bosporus between ¢. 110 and 70 B.c. They are frequently found on sites
in Colchis and in the cities to the north of the Black Sea.38 From 96/5 (the
first dated issues, year 202) silver drachms and tetradrachms and gold
staters were struck in the name of Mithridates Eupator. On the obverse
his portrait is done in a realistic style with hair following the contours of
the head: on the reverse Pegasus stoops to drink and the eight-rayed sun-
star points to Persian ancestry. A few years later a more idealizing head of
the king appears (¢. 92-89), with wilder hair: perhaps an attempt to hint
at him as the New Dionysus.®?

IV. KINGS AND ROMANS IN WESTERN ANATOLIA, 108~89 B.C.

In the last decade of the second century B.c. Mithridates, still in his late
twenties and early thirties, was compared by his court flatterers to
Alexander and to Dionysus, though he had not won his northern empire
in person but presided over it from his capital at Sinope. He had also
studiously avoided confrontation with Rome; and the Romans at that
time were disinclined to involve themselves beyond the province of Asia
because the Jugurthan and Cimbric Wars and the raids by the Scordisci
from the north-east kept them fully in play in Europe. Rome’s attitude,
however, gradually changed after Mithridates’ acquisition of his Black
Sea empire and after they had watched his interventions in states only
just beyond the Roman province, during the years 114-101 B.c.#
Shortly after his Black Sea conquests, perhaps in 109/8 he travelled
incognito through Bithynia and even into the province of Asia,

38 Head 1911 (B 171); 502; 505; Imhoof-Blumer 1912 (B 175); Golenko 1965 (B 162); 1969 (B 163);
Karyshovsky 1965 (B 178); Mattingly 1979 (D 283) 1513~15; McGing 1986 (p 35) 94-6; Golenko
1973 (B 164); Shelov 1983 (D 718); 1982 (D 714).

39 Head 1911 (B 171) 501~2; Seltman 1955 (B 237) Pl. 57, 2 and 3; Kraay—Hirmer 1966 (n 182) Pl.
211; Price 1968 (p 221); McGing 1986 (D 35) 97-9.

40 Just. xxxvit.3.4-5. Appian Mith. 13 makes Nicomedes’ envoys play on Rome’s fear of a
powerful Asiatic king getting a foothold in Europe, just as in the case of Antiochus III.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

KINGS AND ROMANS IN ANATOLIA 141

gathering information; not surprisingly he was subsequently believed to
have been spying out the land for his wars against Rome, though these
were twenty years later.

In 108-107 Mithridates and Nicomedes of Bithynia saw a narrow
window of opportunity and marched into Paphlagonia and partitioned
it.41 A Roman embassy ordered them to restore its freedom, but was
fobbed off with royal speeches of justification, while Mithridates
proceeded to occupy a piece of Galatia as well, which his father was
supposed to have inherited from former rulers, and Nicomedes, far from
restoring Paphlagonia to its king, installed his own son instead as a
puppet ruler: the embassy, having no brief to deal with the veiled or open
defiance of the kings, returned to Rome.*2

Cappadocia is a longer tale. Mithridates had occupied himself with its
affairs already, earlier, because his father had intervened there and his
sister Laodice was still there as queen of Ariarathes VI, who had ruled
since 130 B.c. Some time after 116 Ariarathes was murdered by a
Cappadocian noble named Gordius (later, Mithridates was rumoured to
have been behind the murder), and his two young sons succeeded to his
throne under the tutelage of their mother: some fourteen years passed
under that regime, until in about 102 B.c. Nicomedes, no loyal partner
in the annexation game, saw fit to send a garrison into Cappadocia and
induce Laodice to marry him. Mithridates reacted sharply, expelled the
garrisons, and handed the kingdom back to one of his nephews,
Ariarathes VII Philometor. Soon, however, we hear that Mithridates
was promoting the return of Gordius to Cappadocia and inciting him to
add the son’s murder to the father’s. Ariarathes, warned of the plot,
turned to all-out war against his erstwhile benefactor, levying a large
Cappadocian army and adding troops from neighbouring kings. Mithri-
dates is said to have invaded Cappadocia with 80,000 infantry, 10,000
cavalry and 600 scythed chariots — hugely exaggerated figures, no doubt,
but in any case a battlefield parley and the assassination of the young king
removed the need for an engagement (c. 101). Mithridates installed his
own son as Ariarathes IX, and Gordius was made regent, for the boy was
only eight.*4 This puppet regime seems to have lasted some four or five
years.

About the time of the battle, or a little before, an embassy from
Mithridates went to Rome, apparently attempting to bribe senators to
ratify his presence in Paphlagonia and Galatia since 107/6 and to counter

‘1 Waddington, Babelon and Reinach 1925 (B 253) 231 no. 40, dated year 190 of the Bithynian era;
the palm on the reverse may refer to the victory in Paphlagonia. Paphlagonia: Liebmann-Frankfort
1968 (D 276) 160-3; Olshausen 1972 (D 49) 810-11. 42 Just. XXXVI1.4; XXXVIIL7.

“3 Chronology of Cappadocian kings 130-85 B.C. and their regnal years on coins: Morkholm
1979 (B 208); Coarelli 1982 (B 142). 44 Just. XXXVIIL1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

142 §. MITHRIDATES

the more recent claims of Nicomedes and Laodice to joint control of
Cappadocia. That is the occasion on which Appuleius Saturninus is said
to have been rude to the Pontic envoys and to have been impeached —
perhaps really for attacking the king’s Roman patrons.** And soon C.
Marius was to show a predatory interest in the region:* he travelled to
Asia in 99 or 98, and, in the short way Roman statesmen adopted with
foreign kings, is said to have admonished Mithridates ‘either to be
greater than the Romans or to obey them’.*”

In about 97 the Cappadocians rebelled against the cruelty of Mithri-
dates’ proxy rulers, and called in the brother of the former king from the
province of Asia, where he was being educated. Mithridates moved
promptly, defeated him and chased him from the kingdom, and the
young man died of an illness — at which point Nicomedes played another
card in the game, taking up the claims of another young man, said to bea
third brother. He sent this pretender, and his wife Laodice, Mithridates’
sister, to Rome to testify that her former husband had recognized three
legitimate sons. Mithridates counteracted by sending Gordius to Rome
to claim that 4is Cappadocian king was a son of the eaflier Ariarathes (V)
who had aided Rome in the war against Aristonicus. The Senate found
all this too tiresome to attempt to unravel, and reacted by ordering
Mithridates out of Cappadocia and — perhaps more unexpectedly —
Nicomedes out of Paphlagonia:*8 both peoples were to be ‘autonomous’
and free from taxation. Mithridates did withdraw (and perhaps stepped
back from his portion of Paphlagonia at the same time — at least in 89 B.c.
he claimed to have done so), and the Cappadocian nobility chose
themselves a king, one Ariobarzanes. It was Sulla, the current governor
of Cilicia who, on instructions from the Senate, went with a few troops
from his province plus some Asiatic levies, and actually established
Ariobarzanes in power.*?

On the other hand, two major developments tipped the balance of
power in Asia Minor in favour of Mithridates. In 96 or 95 Tigranes I,
‘The Great’, succeeded to the throne of Armenia and was happy to ally
himself with Mithridates by marrying his daughter Cleopatra:5° and in 94
Nicomedes of Bithynia died, leaving his kingdom to his son Nicomedes

45 Diod. xxxvi.15; Badian 1958 (A 1) 287.

“© Marius’ designs: Luce 1970 (c 101). Badian dates them to 98 B.C. 1959 (D 3) 173; Sherwin-White
to 99, 1984 (D 291) 108-9. 47 Plut. Mar. 31.2-3.

48 Aemilius Scaurus was accused of taking bribes, perhaps in connexion with this diplomacy in
97/6 8.c., Val. Max. 11.7.8; Ascon. 21¢; Badian 1956 (D 2) 120f; 1959 (D 3) 172-3; Marshall 1976 (>
282).

49 Dated by scholars at 93/2 B.c., 97/6, 95/4. Vell. Pat. 1.15.3, Val. Max. v.7 ext. 2, and the
Cappadocian regnal years are the main sources. J. Rich, reviewing McGing 1986 (p 35), JRS 77
(1987) 244, warns against undue confidence in conclusions from the coinage.

50 Tigranes’ accession date only approximate: Badian 1964 (A 2) 167-8, 176 n. 49. Tigranes as
overlord of kings: App. Syr. 48; Plut. Lue. 21.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THREATS AND BLUFFS 143

IV. In 91/0, Rome being in any case distracted by the Social War,
Mithridates urged his new son-in-law to walk into Cappadocia, again
using Gordius as agent. At the first appearance of Tigranes’ generals
Ariobarzanes fled to Rome: Mithridates was rid of a hostile king on his
borders without himself making a move. But then, much more provoca-
tively, he expelled the young Nicomedes from Bithynia, after an initial
assassination attempt had failed. When the Senate found time it ruled
that both the exiled kings were to be restored, and M’. Aquillius, cos.
101, the son of the organizer of the province of Asia, was appointed to
lead a commission, along with Manlius Maltinus,5! to deal with the
troublesome monarchs of Pontus and Armenia. So far, in Bithynia
Mithridates claimed to be acting for a half-brother of Nicomedes called
Socrates Chrestus — in which he probably had as much, or little, right as
the older Nicomedes had had in Paphlagonia or he himself in Cappado-
cia:52 but that gained him no credit at Rome, even though he still
disclaimed direct aggression in Bithynia.

V. THREATS AND BLUFFS

Mithridates was at the height of his power, secure in his alliance with
Armenia and in the friendship or even (so his ambassador Pelopidas
claimed) alliance of the Arsacid king of Parthia, another ‘Mithridates the
Great’. With Tigranes he had a division-of-spoils compact: Pontus was
to take any conquered cities or territory, Armenia all captives and
movables. He called for contingents from his Black Sea dependants and
— more hopefully than realistically — from the Cimbri, already a spent
force in Gaul: certainly, also, from the nearer Gauls, the Galatians. Far
beyond his normal range of activity, he sent to the kings of Syria and
Egypt, perhaps rather to secure their friendly neutrality than their active
aid. And Memnon says he approached the Medians and Iberians. Rome,
by contrast, was still in trouble with the Italians and had to maintain
large forces in the Alpine region, Macedonia, Gaul and Spain: no more
than five legions could be made available against Mithridates, and then
only after much delay.%3

Yet, after all the impressive preparation, Mithridates again retired
from Bithynia in response to Rome’s demand: he even had his own
Bithynian puppet-ruler, Socrates, put to death.54 Further, when Aquil-
lius and his colleagues directed a small force drawn from the troops of
the province of Asia under Cassius, plus some others from Phrygia and
Galatia, towards Armenian-occupied Cappadocia, Tigranes also
retreated.

5! Better, perhaps, Mancinus. There was a third, but his name is garbled, MRR 11 p. 39, 9. 19.
52. Juss. xxxvit.4; xxxvit.2. Bithynia under Nicomedes IV: Vitucci 1953 (D 79) 107-10.
53 Sherwin-White 1984 (p 291) 126-8. 54 Just. XXXVIII.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

144 5. MITHRIDATES

But now the Roman protégés in Bithynia and Cappadocia were faced
with the bill to the Roman commissioners for their restoration and the
repayment of their debts, and neither could do so. The commissioners,
making Roman foreign policy on the spot, urged their protégés to
recoup their losses and pay their debts by invading Mithridates’ own
kingdom. Ariobarzanes declined, knowing the vulnerability of his own
kingdom to the power of Pontus, but Nicomedes reluctantly drove into
Pontic territory as far as Amastris, and, as an economic measure, closed
the exit of the Black Sea to ships from Pontus. That pressure put on their
clients by the Roman commissioners was the disastrous and fatal
miscalculation: they had misread the signs, and had made up their minds
that Mithridates was a craven spirit, branded as such by twenty years of
backing away from Rome.* Mithridates did retire into his own territory,
but it was to be for the last time, before he struck back hard at the Roman
province. He complained, through his general and envoy Pelopidas,
about Nicomedes’ action. Rebuffed, he sent his son Ariarathes, fast, into
Cappadocia and drove Ariobarzanes out yet again. A second time
Pelopidas was sent to the Roman commissioners, and proudly listed the
peoples of Mithridates’ empire and his allies, adding that even Rome’s
provinces of Asia, Achaea and Africa might be vulnerable.56 Those
words were taken by Aquillius and his colleagues as threat of war. They
had Pelopidas put under close arrest and then sent him back to his master
with orders not to return. The First Mithridatic War (or Mithridates’
first Roman war) was under way — without, it must be said, the
ratification of the Senate and People of Rome.

VI. MITHRIDATES CONQUEST OF ASIA, 89-88 B.C.

Much of the action probably took place in the campaigning season of 89,
Mithridates taking advantage of the war still raging between Rome and
the soci#.5’ Some of the socii appealed to him when he was at the height of
his success and in control of Asia, but it was already too late for him to
give effective aid. His victories in the field in western Pontus and
Bithynia, and his occupation of Phrygia, Bithynia and some cities of
Ionia, may be assigned to 89. His organization of the coast of Asia
(Magnesia, Ephesus, Mytilene), the conquest of outlying areas to north
and south (Paphlagonia, Caria, Lycia and Pamphylia), and the massacre

55 Luce 1970 (C rot) 186f; contra, Sherwin-White 1984 (p 291) 119-20. Economic interests of
Mancinus (if the name is right): Harris 1979 (A 47) 90; 98 n. 1; 100.

56 Aristion (Athenion) is alleged to have claimed that Carthaginians were negotiating with
Mithridates in 88 B.c. (Ath. v.214A), perhaps actually Numidians.

57 Historians used to give 88 B.c., based on App. Mith. 17 (Olympic year 173); Cic. De Imp. Cn.
Pomp. 7, forall down to the Asiatic massacre. But see Badian 1976 (D 4) 109~10; Sherwin-White 1977
(D 75) 74 9. 86; 1980 (D 77) 1979~95; 1984 (D 291) 112; 121~7; McGing 1986 (D 35) 108-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MITHRIDATES’ CONQUEST OF ASIA 145

of the Italians, may reasonably be thought to belong to the spring and
summer of 88; and in the autumn he was drawn into the unsuccessful
siege of Rhodes, which he had to break off by the early winter. Appian’s
narrative at this point perhaps reflects the experiences of P. Rutilius
Rufus who wrote a history in Greek, while in exile from Rome. During
Mithridates’ advance and occupation of Asia he fled from Mytilene to
find safety with the Smyrnaeans.58

M’. Aquillius set about raising troops from Bithynia, exiled Cappado-
cians, Paphlagonians and Galatians. C. Cassius, the governor of Asia,
had his own forces, and Q. Oppius, probably praetor in 89, had another
army, mainly of allied troops, on the borders of Lycaonia. Each Roman
contingent is said to have comprised 40,000 men.° In addition, Nico-
medes had a national levy estimated at 50,000 infantry and 6,00 cavalry.
The dispositions were defensive, guarding four routes from Pontus into
Bithynia and Asia, though these bases, in a semicircle round Pontus and
its puppet-regime of Cappadocia, might well turn into launching-points
for offensives. Nicomedes was to be based in eastern Paphlagonia, that
portion recently ceded by Mithridates; Cassius was to guard the
boundary of Bithynia and Galatia; Aquillius stood on Mithridates’ line
of march into Bithynia, and Oppius was by the foothills of Cappadocia.
To strengthen further Nicomedes’ hold on the key to the Black Sea, a
fleet was posted at Byzantium under Minucius Felix and Popillius
Laenas. Total numbers were 176,000 men, not counting the fleet.
Against that, Mithridates is said to have had 250,000 infantry and 40,000
cavalry: Memnon says he left Amasia and entered Paphlagonia with an
invasion force of 150,000. All the figures are suspicious multiples of
10,000, and undoubtedly exaggerated; Mithridates’ fleet, however, did
have the potential to dominate the eastern Mediterranean, for he had 300
decked ships plus 100 with two banks of oars; he also had a terror-
weapon against enemy infantry in the shape of 130 scythed chariots.

Nicomedes made the first move in the war, from Bithynium (later
Claudiopolis) through Paphlagonia into western Pontus, and the first
battle took place on a plain by the river Amnias. The Pontic generals,
Archelaus and Neoptolemus (brothers, who came perhaps from Sinope
or Amisus) caused panic among Nicomedes’ infantry with the scythed
chariots, and Nicomedes’ camp was captured and he fled to the Roman
armies, while as yet Mithridates’ main arm, the Pontic infantry phalanx,
had not even been in action. After the battle Mithridates adopted a
magnanimous stance, recalling that of Alexander, by dismissing

58 The end of App. Mitd. 21 (see also BCiv. 1.55) probably marks the end of the campaigning
season. Rutilius: Cic. Rab. Post. 27; Dio fr. 97.4; Athen. 1v.66; Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 117-18.

59 There were only a few actual Roman citizens in these armies; FGrH 434 22.6 F Memnon; Just.
XXXVIIL,3,8, 60 Magie 1950 (a 67) 11 1093 n. $7 and 1101 n. 26.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

146 5. MITHRIDATES

prisoners to their homes. It was a pose he was to hold on to on several
occasions during the following months, and he could afford it, for in this
one day he had destroyed the largest of the armies and the power of his
main rival in Asia Minor.

Nicomedes joined M’. Aquillius, who guarded the line of approach
from Paphlagonia into Bithynia. Mithridates’ army crossed Mount
Scorobas into eastern Bithynia; and when a mere 100 of Mithridates’
allied Sarmatian cavalry met a regiment of 800 Bithynian horse,
Nicomedes’ men were again defeated, and he retreated further to join
Cassius. The Pontic generals now came upon the nearest of the Roman-
led armies, that of Aquillius, at a stronghold called Protopachium in
eastern Bithynia. In the Roman defeat that followed Aquillius lost about
a quarter of his alleged 40,000 men; 300, probably Asiatic Greeks, who
were captured and led before Mithridates, were set free; Aquillius’ camp
was taken; and Aquillius fled by night back to Pergamum, the seat of the
governor of Asia. Further south, Cassius had taken in Nicomedes, and
perhaps had the other commissioners with him: they occupied a fortress
in Phrygia called Leontoncephalae, thus falling back into the provincia
too, if not so far. There they spent some time drilling their ill-assorted
troops, but gave up in disgust and retreated even further, Nicomedes
betaking himself to Pergamum, having given up hope of retaining
Bithynia. Although Cassius still had his army he obviously had little faith
in it, in spite of help from Chaeremon of Nysa; he fell back to the Aegean
coast and crossed to Rhodes. The Roman fleet that was sealing the
Bosporus straits dispersed after the news of Mithridates’ victories, and
the latter’s goo ships had free passage into the Propontis and the Aegean.

The king in person now made a progress through Bithynia, and
moved on to occupy Phrygia, Mysia to the north of Pergamum, and the
nearby Roman-administered areas. The take-over proceeded quietly and
quickly: officers were despatched to receive the submission of outlying
Lycia and Pamphylia, and of Ionia, where the chief Greek cities of
Roman Asia lay. Caria, at least, offered more resistance. Oppius had
fallen back into the city of Laodicea, where he had time to seek, and
obtain, reinforcements from Aphrodisias;*! so at Laodicea Mithridates
met his first threat of organized resistance since entering the Roman
province — which he met by proclaiming an amnesty to the citizens if
they would surrender Oppius. The Laodiceans handed Oppius over in
mock formality, preceded by his lictors, and Mithridates kept him in his
entourage in some style as a captured Roman general and later set him
free, whereupon Oppius made his way to Cos. Cassius was safe in
Rhodes. Aquillius, the main culprit, suffered the worst fate. He, too,
abandoned the mainland of Asia for Lesbos, but was handed over by the

61 Chaeremon: SIG 741; Aphrodisias: Reynolds 1982 (B 226) 1-4; 11-20 nos, 2 and 3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

MITHRIDATES’ CONQUEST OF ASIA 147

citizens of Mytilene. Mithridates had him tied to an ass and put him up to
public ridicule, wearing a placard; and eventually, hauled back to
Pergamum, he was to die through having molten gold poured down his
throat, in mockery of the avarice that had brought on the war.
Mithridates’ campaign in Asia Minor had been totally successful. Four
armies had either been defeated or had disintegrated. Rome’s forty-year-
old administration of Asia had collapsed. Many cities welcomed Mithri-
dates, especially tax-paying communities and those where Roman and
Italian money-lenders had been most active. Mithridates set about
appointing satraps in western Asia, underlining his claims to a Persian
heritage, and epéscopi, ‘overseers’, in many cities. In a bid for popularity
he remitted taxes for a five-year period and cancelled debts owed by
states and private persons: being now in control of the wealth of Bithynia
and the revenues of Asia he was able to make an early and impressive
show of that philanthropia which was an important part of his programme
and befitted the son of Euergetes.®? One can understand the current of
good will in certain cities, Delos, even Chios and Rhodes, on which he
might hope to capitalize. On the other hand, cities that had privileged
status in relation to Rome, such as Ilium, Chios, Rhodes and the Lycian
cities, might be expected, in spite of all, to stick to Rome and their own
interest. At Stratonicea near the coast of Caria Mithridates placed a
garrison and imposed a fine, showing something of the iron fist he had so
far kept hidden in Asia. His generals were delegated to deal with
outlying areas, to the far south in Lycia and to the north in Mithridates’
rear, where Pylaemenes may have been acting as a focus of resistance in
his homeland of Paphlagonia. At Magnesia (probably the Carian one on
the Maeander) resistance was offered, and Archelaus was wounded.
Tabae in Caria and Patara and Telmessus in Lycia subsequently recorded
their loyalty to Rome: Termessus also, remote on the western extremity
of Pamphylia, stayed firm and some Pamphylian cities supplied ships to
Lucullus in 86/5 B.c. Sanctuary was offered to Romans on Cos for a
while, but soon Mithridates took that island over also. There he gained a
hostage, in a son of Prolemy Alexander, and Egyptian treasures, possibly
including 800 talents raised by Jews for the Jerusalem Temple.*4
Meanwhile, perhaps in the autumn of 89, news of Michridates’

6 App. Mith. 21; Pliny HN xxxit.48. But MeGing 1980 (D 32) argues for confusion of father,
cos. 129 B.C., with son. Gran. Lic. (xxxv. p. 27 Flemisch; Greenidge-Clay 187) describes Sulla asking
for the return of Aquillius in 85 B.c.

63 _Diod. xxxvil.26, Just. xxxviit.3. Philanthropia: Glew 1977 (D 17); McGing 1986 (D 35) 109-10.
Mithridates’ letter: Welles 1934 (B 258) 295, nos. 73—4; his repair of earthquake damage at Apamea:
Strabo x11.8.18.

64 Mithridates’ Athenian supporters adorned Delos with a Heroén, Gross 1954 (D 21); Bruneau-
Ducat 196; (B 265) 140. See also J Délos 2039. Victories of Mithridates at Chios and Rhodes in
equestrian games (not in person): Robert 1960 (B 231) 345, n. 4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

148 §. MITHRIDATES

victories, and the collapse of Roman rule in Asia, reached Rome, still
preoccupied with internal dissensions and the severe war against the
allies. Senate and People declared war on Mithridates,® but steps to deal
with the eastern crisis were implemented only slowly (ch. 6, pp. 166-73).
When the command against Mithridates was given to L. Cornelius Sulla
it took him some eighteen months to assemble five legions and to feel
secure enough about the political situation he was leaving behind him in
Rome (and he was, of course, wrong about that). And financially, Rome
was in dire straits: the so-called “Treasures of Numa’ were in part sold off
to support the coming war.

And now occurred the high point of horror, probably in the first half
of 88: the ‘Asiatic (or ‘Ephesian’) Vespers’, in which 80,000 (less credibly
150,000) Roman and Italian expatriates were massacred in the cities of
Asia.% Mithridates wrote secretly to all regional satraps and overseers of
cities that, on the thirtieth day after the day of writing, they should have
all Italian residents in their communities killed, along with their wives
and children and any freedmen of Italian birth, and have their corpses
cast Out unburied. Mithridates offered freedom to slaves who killed or
informed on their Italian masters, and relief of half their debt to any who
dealt similarly with their creditors. His treasury would share the
property of the victims half-and-half with their assassins or informers.
The response from many Greek cities was enthusiastic, displaying as
much their hatred of the Roman and Italian expatriates as their fear of
Mithridates: Ephesus, temporarily his residence, Pergamum, Adramyt-
tium, Tralles and Caunus were all the scene of atrocities. Mithridates’
order was surely a calculated response to the news of Rome’s declaration
of war: besides exploiting the widespread unpopularity of the wes-
terners, it ensured that no city that did his bidding now could ever hope
to be received back into Roman allegiance. Many of the Asian cities were
by now under ‘tyrants’, such as Philopoemen, episcopys at Ephesus;
others are known at Adramyttium, Apollonis, Colophon and Tralles.
The social divisions characteristic of the ancient city helped to produce
these changes of local regime, to which Mithridates’ present power in
Asia was the spur. It was now the time for pro-Roman councillors and
their sympathizers among the well-to-do to suffer for their real or
perceived abuses; and Rome’s own representatives, the governors and
the publicani, were held responsible for the prevailing climate of

65 Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 56-76; 1987 (C 94) 144. The last occasion on which the Roman assembly
passed a vote for war? Rich 1976 (A 95) 14; 17; Contra, Harris 1979 (A 47) 263.

66 Sarikakis 1976 (D 65). Badian 1976 (D 4) 110-11, dates the massacre somewhat before the
middle of 88, Sherwin-White 1980 (p 77) puts it in winter 89/88. The numbers probably

exaggerated: Dio fr. 109.8, believed that the mutual pogroms of Marius and Sulla were far worse.
Magie 1950 (a 67) 1216; Brunt 1971 (A 16) 224-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

OVERREACH 149

aggressive greed (pleonexia) and acquisitiveness (philokerdia), and for
encouraging the evils of malicious litigation.‘

Mithridates was now master of all western Asia Minor. He was hailed
as the preserver of Asia, and a new era was proclaimed, upon the
liberation of the cities from Rome, which lasted from 88 to 85 B.c. A
short but splendid series of tetradrachms was issued from Pergamum,*8
and now, too, Mithridates could claim his Hellenistic and Iranian titles as
overlord: megas, ‘Great’ and basileus basileon, ‘King of Kings’. The latest
holder of that Persian title, Mithridates II of Parthia, had died, and our
Mithridates was now king over many vassals.®

VII. OVERREACH

It was tempting to push further into the Aegean and into Macedonia and
Greece: it was also politic, and not obviously overreach, to strike into
Europe before Rome collected a consular army under competent
commanders: C. Sentius, the Roman commander in Macedonia, with
only two legions, was kept fully occupied by Thracian tribes. Mithri-
dates had large, victorious armies and command of the sea; all that was
needed was an invitation to intervene, and that was to be forthcoming
from anti-Roman parties at Athens, and to elicit first moral backing and
then military support for pro-Mithridatic tyrants at Delos and Athens.
But first he must deal with Rhodes, his only possible remaining
challenger in the Aegean and the main remaining haven for Romans and
Italians.”°

In autumn 88, knowing what must come, the Rhodians strengthened
their walls, constructed artillery against besiegers, and called in aid from
the Lycians and the Telmessians. On Mithridates’ approach they
withdrew inside the harbour, closed their gates, and prepared to fight
from the walls. Mithridates tried to enter the harbour but failed, and sat
to await the arrival of his main-line infantry. When intervening
skirmishes brought some advantage to them the Rhodians grew bolder:
on two occasions sections of their fleet came off best, and then, when
Mithridates’ expected land forces set sail from Caunus they were
scattered by a storm, and the Rhodians capitalized on the confusion to
capture, ram and burn scattered ships and took 4oo prisoners. Mithri-

67 Orac. Sibyll. 111.3 50-5; Cic. De Imp. Cn. Pomp. 7; Flac. 60-1; Diod. xxxvit.5; Just. xXxvuI1.7.8;
App. Mith. 16; 21; 56. Dio fr. 101. Tyrants: Strab. x11.1.66; x1v.1.42; App. Mitd. 48: Plut. Lue. 3.4.

68 For coins dated by the new Asiatic era of Pergamum see Reinach 1888 (B 224) 195; Kraay—
Hirmer 1966 (B 182) 377, no. 774.

69° Golenko and Karyszkovski 1972 (B 165) 29 n. 2; Karyshkovsky 1985 (D 25) 572-9; Yailenko
1985 (B 261) 617-19; Vinogradov, Molyev and Tolstikov 1985 (B 252) 596-9.

7 Diod. xxxvit.28; Reinach 1890 (D 55) 144-7; Magie 1950 (A 67) I 218-19.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

150 §. MITHRIDATES

dates, while preparing for another naval engagement, pressed on with
the investment of the city. He had a structure built, on two ships fixed
alongside, which served as a huge bridge fitted with catapults, to assist
the scaling of the walls. It was nicknamed sambuca, probably after a
triangular four-stringed instrument favoured by Rhodian musicians.”
The huge device caused great alarm amongst the Rhodians, but in the
event it collapsed under its own weight. Finally, Mithridates gave up the
attempt to take the city and sailed off to the mainland, where he laid siege
to Patara in Lycia, but failed to take that, either. Psychological warfare at
once exploited the dent in his prestige resulting from the two failed
sieges: religious propaganda began to be heard. The goddess Isis had
been observed hurling fire from her temple upon the sambuca, and at
Patara Mithridates had had a dream warning him not to cut down the
sacred trees in the grove of Latona to make siege engines. He left
Pelopidas to pursue the war against the Lycians, and applied himself to
raising more troops in Asia Minor. He also conducted trials of people
accused of plotting against him or considered to have pro-Roman
sympathies — a further presage of the growth of opposition.

VIII ATHENS, DELOS AND ACHAEA

Athens had not remained unaffected by the stirring events in Asia, and an
envoy to Mithridates was found in the politician Aristion,’? whose
return was received with rejoicing at Athens by anti-Roman elements
(in, perhaps, late spring, 88 B.c.). According to Athenaeus they were the
‘mob’ and according to Pausanias the ‘turbulent element’, but the
apologia for Athens in Velleius and Plutarch, that the city was compelled
by force to collaborate with Mithridates’ generals, rings very hollow.73
Aristion had himself elected strategos epi ton hop/on, ‘magistrate in charge
of the arms’, and appointed colleagues and archons: some opposing
aristocrats were killed and their property confiscated.” Philo, head of the
Academy, escaped to Rome, with other important persons.75

A naval adventure was staged by this regime to try to seize Delos, the
old possession of Athens, and install one Apellicon (another philoso-
pher, said to be Peripatetic) as puppet-ruler in Aristion’s interest, but it

71 Marsden 1971 (A 70) 90-4; 1969 (A 70) 108-9.

72 So named on the coins and in all literary sources except Athenaeus (from Posidonius), who
calls him Athenion and makes him a Peripatetic. An old, unresolved crux.

3 Strab. 1x.1.20; Ath. v.212€; 213¢; Paus. 1.20.5; Vell. Pat. 11.23; Plut. Su//a 12. Aristion coupled
with Nabis and Catiline: Plut. Mor. 809.

74 But some upper-class support for Aristion: Dow 1947 (p 13); Laffranque 1962 (B Gt).

75 Cic. Brut. 306. Epicureans and Peripatetics may have hated the Athenian and the Roman
establishment: Zeller 1923 (H 138) t11 1, 386; Badian 1976 (p 4) 514-15; Candiloro 1965 (D 258) 158—
71; Deininger 1971 (D 10) 245.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ATHENS, DELOS AND ACHAEA Ig!

failed, because a Roman prefect, Orbius, with a few ships, plus the strong
Italian merchant presence, was able to stiffen resolve there.” However,
the naval fortress of the Piraeus, the ship-sheds with their space for
hundreds of warships, and the actual navy of Athens, were on offer to
Mithridates. Before long, the fleet of Mithridates’ general Archelaus
took Delos with overwhelming force and restored it and other strong
points to Athens’ control: there were put to death some 20,000
opponents of what was becoming known as the ‘Cappadocian Faction’
in the Aegean.”” The sacred treasure of Delos was sent under guard to
Athens to bolster the prestige of Aristion’s regime, and 2,000 troops
were sent to ensure its security.”8 The time of Archelaus’ naval advance
was probably late summer to autumn of 88. Part of his fleet made for
Piraeus, but a contingent under Metrophanes split from it after Delos,
destined for the ports of central Greece.

The states of southern and central Greece reacted variously. The
Achaeans and the Spartans went over to Mithridates easily, as did
Boeotia, except for Thespiae, which had to be besieged. Metrophanes’
army had less success on Euboea, at the stronghold of Demetrias, and
against the Magnesians, who resisted firmly. One reason for that was the
presence of Bruttius Sura,” a legate of C. Sentius, the governor of
Macedonia. He played a vital role in holding up the Pontic advance
during the autumn and winter of 88/7, buying time for the arrival of
Sulla’s consular army, which eventually arrived in Greece in spring 87.
With his small force Bruttius made naval raids on the island of Sciathus
and perhaps on Piraeus itself. He ruthlessly crucified recaptured slaves
and cut off the hands of the free-born, as an earnest of Rome’s reaction to
rebellious Greeks. He won a small naval victory, in which two Pontic
ships were captured and their crews put to death; and receiving another
1,000 infantry and cavalry he fought a series of actions over three days
near Chaeronea in which he came off on equal terms with the joint forces
of Aristion and Archelaus — but his run of success was halted when
Spartans and Achaeans turned up to their aid. Archelaus, whose forces
were probably not yet as large as they were to become, pulled back to
Athens and Piraeus, retaining Euboea as a safe base for his army and
sheltering behind the protecting fleet. Bruttius Sura’s reward for his
services from Sulla’s quaestor L. Lucullus, in the vanguard of the
approaching army, was to be brusquely ordered back to Macedonia to
join Sentius and leave the business of Mithridates to the new appointee.

% Strab. x.5.4; Ath. v.214p. The Pontic general Menophanes on Delos: Paus. 111.23.5.

7 The ‘Kappadokizontes’, App. Méth. 53 and 61. Mithridates was ‘the Cappadocian’, Cic. Flac.
61; Ath, v.215B.

78 Coin hoards on Delos reflecting its fate at this time: Hackens and Lévy 1965 (B 295).
7) Brettius in the Greek literary sources, Braitios in the inscriptions, 1G 1x.2.613; Plassart 1949 (B

219) 831.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8007 ‘sserg AisIIATU_ aSprquIKD © sUTTUO saToistpy aSspuquie;

999IF) [BIIUZD) 9

SF SS a

sang

vweryiuisog

THE SIEGES OF ATHENS AND PIRAEUS 1§3

IX. THE SIEGES OF ATHENS AND PIRAEUS

Early in 87 B.c. Sulla with his five legions left Italy for Greece. He is first
found in Thessaly, summoning provisions, reinforcements and money
from Thessaly and Aetolia. He approached Attica through Boeotia,
where most of the cities, headed by Thebes, returned to Roman
allegiance; and on his arrival he was faced with conducting two sieges
independently but simultaneously. Aristion and his supporters were
shut up in the city of Athens from autumn 87 until 1 March 86, and in
their redoubt on the Acropolis for several weeks after that. Separate
from them, no longer linked to the city by the Long Walls,®° was Piraeus,
easily provisioned from the sea and so the obvious place for Archelaus to
keep his garrison of Pontic troops. (The two main sources, Plutarch and
Appian, oddly concentrate each on a different one of these related, but
separate, sieges.) Sulla’s greater effort and personal participation were
directed against the strategically more important Piraeus. Twice he
retired to Eleusis and Megara, largely because of lack of timber and other
materials for siege engines: twice, unsuccessfully, Archelaus, himself
closely beleaguered, tried to get supplies through to Athens city, where
some of the defenders were reduced, it was said, to cannibalism. The
Pontic troops in Piraeus were better off, because supplies, and reinforce-
ments, arrived from Mithridates; but, to offset that, a Pontic army was
defeated, with the loss of 1,500 men, by a northern detachment of Sulla’s
forces near Chalcis, just as Archelaus’ intended aid to Athens was being
cut off. The siege of Piraeus settled into a tough phase of building,
mining, countermining and fighting in underground tunnels; the
besieged kept Sulla at bay, and when he returned to Eleusis in the winter
he had to protect his camp against cavalry raids.

Mithridates’ command of the sea was still undisputed, and so was his
ability to supply his strongpoints in Euboea and Piraeus. Sulla had no
navy, to speak of, but he had control over north-west and central Greece,
where it was in his interest to provoke a major land battle. The impasse
lasted into the spring of 86. In an attempt to break it Sulla sent Lucullus,
early in winter 87, to collect a fleet from naval powers as far away as Syria
and Egypt, the Rhodians being in no position to help. For his part,
Mithridates, contrariwise, determined to win land superiority in Greece,
and sent a great army, under his son Arcathias, overland into Greece via
Thrace and Macedonia. The small Roman army in Macedonia was
overcome, and by spring 86 Arcathias’ army, probably the largest ever
sent by Mithridates even after it had left garrisons at Philippi and
Amphipolis, was in Magnesia in north-east Greece. It was the trump

80 In ruins at this time and used to refurbish the fortifications of the city and the port, Livy
XXx1.26; Paus, 1.2.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

154 5. MITHRIDATES

card to win the war in Greece for Mithridates while Sulla’s forces were
divided between Athens, Piraeus and garrison duty opposite Euboea
and in other towns in central Greece.

The besiegers of Athens city now had a lucky break. Indiscreet talk
within informed them of a weak point in the defences, by the Heptachal-
cum between the western and Dipylon gates, and an attack was directed
there. The Athenians were sapped also by dire famine, and the tyrant
Aristion had become more and more unpopular and isolated. On 1
March they surrendered the main city to Sulla’s troops: Aristion and his
followers went up to the Acropolis, burning the Odeum in order to deny
its materials to Sulla’s forces. There was much destruction in the main
city, though total burning was forbidden by Sulla in recognition of
Athens’ glorious past; and when the followers of Aristion finally gave up
the Acropolis, many weeks later, at about the time of the battle of
Chaeronea, they were summarily executed. Some forty pounds of gold
and six hundred of silver fell into the hands of Sulla’s legate, Curio.

Meanwhile, the siege of Piraeus was being pressed ever harder by
Sulla: the groves of the Academy and Lyceum were cut for siege timbers
and he took the temple treasures of Epidaurus, Delphi and Olympia.®!
Archelaus conducted a stout defence, but after losing 2,000 troops in a
battle outside the enceinte, where he had ventured, he finally came to the
decision to evacuate and, sailing off northwards, made contact with the
northern army, flushed with successes in Thrace and Macedonia but
commanded no longer by Arcathias, who had died of illness at Tisaeum
in Magnesia; in fact, when the armies met at Thermopylae the overall
command passed to Archelaus. Piraeus, abandoned, was destroyed by
Sulla, and the arsenal of Philo burnt.

X. THE BATTLES IN BOEOTIA

The summer that followed the sieges of Athens and Piraeus saw two
major battles, close to one another in both space and time. Our sources
are Plutarch and Appian, with Plutarch, a native of Chaeronea, offering
the fuller account of the battle in his city’s territory. Both sources give
only a brief sketch of the second battle, fought some weeks later at
Orchomenus.®2 Chronology, strategy, numbers, tactics are all subject to
doubts and variant interpretations. Chaeronea was fought in the early
summer at about the same time as the surrender of the Acropolis, and
Orchomenus in the high summer, before the autumn rains.83 The total of

81H. A. Thompson 1934 (B 320) 394; 1937 (B 321) 223-4; D. B. Thompson 1937 (B 319) 411;
Young 1951 (B 324) 155; 183; 262-3; Ervin 1958 (B 289). Temple treasures: Paus. 1x.7.5.
82 Sulla’s memoirs were amongst the material available to Plutarch and Appian.

83 Reinach 1890(D $$) 168-76; Ormerod. CAH 1x! 244-54; Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 139-40.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE BATTLES IN BOEOTIA 155

the original Pontic army is given by Appian as 120,000 men: Memnon is
much more modest, saying 60,000, but the late writers Eutropius and
Orosius agree with the higher estimate, and that some 110,000 were lost
at Chaeronea.® Weeks later, with a new army of 80,000 incorporated
into his surviving force, Archelaus lost almost the whole army at
Orchomenus — a further 90,000 (i.e. he had no effective army left). Sulla’s
calculation, in 85 B.c., of Mithridates’ total losses was 160,000, more
modest than the implications of Plutarch and Appian. In any case, all the
figures are exaggerated, because units were counted at their paper sizes —
and casualties probably likewise reckoned by corps lost rather than
corpses counted. Numbers on the Roman side were apparently mini-
mized by Sulla: he seems to have reported that he had at Chaeronea only
15,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, of whom only fourteen or fifteen were
missing, and two of those turned up by the evening! But others may have
been engaged separately at Thurium and by the city of Chaeronea itself.
It is usually believed that most of Sulla’s five legions were at Chaeronea
at least in the wider sense, which would make some 30,000 Romans, to
which must be added some Macedonians and local Greeks: Appian says
that the forces of Archelaus outnumbered the Romans by three to one,
which would make Sulla’s total army at Chaeronea about 40,000.85

One respect in which the Pontic forces most undoubtedly outnum-
bered the Roman was cavalry, and Archelaus’ strategy was determined
by the nature of his now very large army, whose cavalry contingent
required plains, such as those of Macedonia and Thessaly, or, at the most
southerly, those of Phocis and Boeotia. If he did lose control of the plains
of central Greece he had in mind a retreat eastwards to Aulis and, from
there, the crossing into Euboea, under the protection of the fleet. But at
the time when the two armies were coming close to contact Archelaus
was actually moving into Phocis, in a dangerous move to cut off an
isolated Roman brigade to his north.

Sulla’s strategy had taken him out of Attica. He was criticized in his
own camp for transferring the war to central Greece, but in reality he had
no option. He had an army which he believed could beat that of Pontus
in the field, but the land of Attica was poor, and exhausted by his long
presence there during the sieges: his troops needed the relative pros-
perity of Boeotia and Phocis for supplies. Most urgent of all was the need
to link up with the brigade, of some 6,o00 men, commanded by
Hortensius, which was stranded in Thessaly and likely to be cut off by
Archelaus. Hortensius did manage to join Sulla by crossing one of the
passes unnoticed by the Pontic commanders, and met Sulla’s main force
at Patronis. It was a welcome addition: Hortensius was a vigorous and

84 Eutropius v.6.3; Oros. vi.2.5. 85 App. Mith. 41; BCiv. 1.79.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

156 §. MITHRIDATES

resourceful officer, and Sulla’s men were spared the panic that might
have been caused by the loss of their comrades in a separate engagement.

The first actions and counteractions of the two armies now took place
on the plain of Elatea at Philoboeotus.8 The Pontic generals offered
battle, but Sulla declined several times because of their superiority in
numbers, and kept his men digging earthworks. However, after the
three days thus occupied, his troops besought him for something more
interesting to do, so he set them the task of seizing an isolated steep hill,
the acropolis of Parapotamii, to the south of Archelaus’ camp. The
successful Roman occupaticn of this strongpoint at once made Arche-
laus’ position in the plain of Elatea impossible, so he struck camp and
moved south-eastwards towards Chaeronea, in the direction of Aulis,
Chalcis and the coast. The folk of Chaeronea begged for Roman help for
their city, and Sulla sent his legate Gabinius with a legion, which reached
the city even before the deputation got back. Sulla likewise moved
south-eastwards across the river Assus and settled near Mt Hedylium,
while Archelaus’ position was between Mt Hedylium and Mt Acontium.
Archelaus’ move had in fact been a disastrous one: he was in an area that
was rocky and cramped and gave no scope to his cavalry. It was the sign
for Sulla now to work for a decisive engagement.

For one day Sulla waited, and then, leaving another legate, Murena,
with a legion and two cohorts to face Archelaus, moved towards
Chaeronea. Through Gabinius he got two citizens of Chaeronea to leada
small contingent of his men along a hill-track to a part of Thurium hill
above the point where the Pontic detachment already stood; and then he
drew up his own battle-line on the plain, with himself on the right and
Murena on the left. Presently the men of Chaeronea and Sulla’s
detachment surmounted the track over Thurium and appeared above the
Pontic troops: they caused great panic, and Archelaus’ men rushed down
the hill, badly upsetting the dispositions of the main force below. When
Archelaus at last got his battle-line drawn up he sent into attack a cavalry
force, which had little effect, and then the weapons of terror, the scythed
chariots. But scythed chariots were only practically effective at a gallop
or canter, and without momentum were easily neutralized. Sulla’s men
allowed the slowly lumbering things to pass through open lanes in the
ranks; they jogged harmlessly by, to Roman jeers, and their crews were
despatched by javelins from behind. When the main battle-lines joined,
the Pontic phalanx yielded only slowly and there was much tactical
movement; but ultimately the Romans pushed the phalanx back to the
river Cephisus and towards Mt Acontium. Archelaus’ troops were killed
in huge numbers on the plain, and even more in the flight across the

8 Hammond 1938 (p 23) with differences in detail from Kromayer 1907 (A 58) 353f, followed by
Ormerod CAH 1x! 249-52.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE BATTLES IN BOEOTIA 1§7

stony ground to their camp, because at first he excluded them, trying to
rally them to fight, and only as a last resort admitted the survivors.
Archelaus made off eastwards to the coast with, it was said, only 10,000
left of his great army.

Sulla was master of the field, even though he still had no means of
finishing Archelaus off because of his continuing lack of a fleet: he had
demonstrated his, and Rome’s, superiority to the mightiest army
Mithridates could assemble, led by a first-rate general. From the field he
dashed with some light troops to the coast to try to deny Archelaus the
crossing of the Euripus, but failed; so he marched back to central Greece
to deal harshly with the Thebans, handing over half their territory to the
sanctuaries to recompense the gods for the moneys he had taken himself
for his sieges. In Athens, he took over from Curio the recent followers of
Aristion; them he executed, Aristion he kept alive for the moment, and
the Athenians in general were graciously allowed their liberty.” Mean-
while, Archelaus, from his base at Chalcis, was far from inactive: his fleet
raided up and down the coasts of Greece, reaching Zacynthus, and
destroyed some of the transports conveying the advance guard of the
new Roman army under Flaccus sent by the government of Cinna.

From his base in southern Greece Sulla heard that Flaccus’ army had
landed and was on its way eastwards, nominally against the armies of
Pontus but in fact to supersede him if he did not co-operate. He set off
towards Thessaly to meet them, but, while at Melitaea in Phthiotis, heard
that the lands behind him, Boeotia particularly, were being ravaged by a
reassembled Mithridatic army — the rump of Archelaus’ army plus a
brigade of 80,000 led by Dorylaus, freshly arrived in Chalcis. So he
turned south to fight his second great battle of the summer; and it was
Archelaus who opted for a deciding battle on the same scale as at
Chaeronea,® and chose the ground, by Orchomenus some ro kilometres
east of Chaeronea in the largest plain in Boeotia, eminently suited to his
cavalry. Less favourably, however, the river Cephisus debouched into
Lake Copais and its marshes and the short but navigable river Melas
flowed by Orchomenus and also lost itself in the marshes.

Sulla accepted the challenge, a strategy that might at first have seemed
an error. But he now put to good use the entrenching skills he had made
the troops practise before Chaeronea. First, they dug a series of three-
metre-wide ditches across the plain to contain the Pontic cavalry and
hem Archelaus’ troops in to the eastern, marshy end of the plain. The
two armies drew their battle-lines quite close to each other. Archelaus’
cavalry charged in force to sweep away the digging-parties, and nearly

87 Gran. Lic. 24F (Greenidge—Clay p. 182); Paus. 1.20.5: Strab. 1X.1.20.
88 Mommsen assigned Orchomenus to 85 B.c., but see Magie 1950 (a4 67) 111107 n. 47; Sherwin-
White 1984 (D 291) 1gon. 32.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

158 5. MITHRIDATES

succeeded.89 All depended, for Sulla, on containing those cavalry: he
seized his sword (or a standard) and rallied his men on foot, and two
cohorts from the right wing, and his own escort, stabilized the danger
area. After that turning-point the Romans won a decisive victory, even
against a renewed cavalry attack. Meanwhile, Sulla’s trenches had
hemmed in Archelaus’ main army so narrowly that in the closing phases
of the action some Pontic archers had no room to draw bow and were
reduced to stabbing with their arrows. Archelaus’ men spent the night
pent up in their fortifications together with the dead and wounded; and
next day Sulla resumed the process of penning them in with entrench-
ments now no more than 200 metres from the camp. In a battle outside
the camp to try to break this final investment the Pontic troops were
defeated, and the camp fell. There followed total disaster for Archelaus’
men: they were pursued and slaughtered, they lost their way in the
marshes and were drowned. The commander himself hid in the marshes
for two days, and then escaped in a boat, making his way to Chalcis.
All that Archelaus was able to collect from the wreckage of Mithri-
dates’ armies in Europe was a scattered detachment or two that had not
been at Orchomenus. Sulla now turned to ravaging Boeotia, especially
the coastal towns opposite Euboea, in revenge for their‘ continual
changes of sides: he then intended to turn once more northwards to
Thessaly, to confront Flaccus. Before he left Boeotia, however, he learnt
that Archelaus wanted an interview with him. Archelaus was treating
from much the weaker position, to be sure, and although Mithridates
had probably authorized these diplomatic moves his general could not
be sure of their reception by the king. In the event Sulla and Archelaus
reached a cordial agreement on terms, which were indeed then not fully
acceptable to Mithridates, but which his deteriorating position in Asia
over 86 and 85 B.c. was eventually to force him to underwrite. The terms
were that Mithridates was to give up Asia and Paphlagonia and to hand
back Bithynia to Nicomedes and Cappadocia to Ariobarzanes. He was to
hand over seventy (or eighty) ships fully equipped to Sulla, plus a war
indemnity of 2,000 (or 3,000) talents. In return Sulla would guarantee
Mithridates his rule in Pontus and the rest of his territories, and secure
for him the status of an ally of Rome. These terms remained on offer for
some months, but Sulla did not waver in the demands he made.
Meanwhile, Archelaus became his personal friend and stayed in his
camp, was promised 2,500 hectares of land in Euboea, and was spoken of
as a ‘friend and ally of the Roman people’ —a fate notably better than that
of his personal enemy Aristion, who had now been executed by poison.
Sulla marched north to Thessaly to winter, build ships, and await the
arrival of Lucullus’ fleet garnered from Cyprus, Phoenicia and Pamphy-

89 Frontin, Sér. 1.3.17; Plut. Sulla 21. ® Frontin, Str. 1.8.12; Amm. Marc. xvi.12.41.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

REACTIONS IN ASIA 159

lia: the seventy ships of Archelaus in Greece were detained as the first
part of Sulla’s demands or as the core of an invasion fleet if Mithridates
should fail to accept the terms.

XI. REACTION IN ASIA, 86 B.C.

After Chaeronea, Mithridates met with increasing unrest amongst his
new subject-allies of Asia. He had already harboured suspicions: sixty
nobles from the cantons of Galatia had been lodged in Pergamum as
hostages: now, they and their families were killed, some arrested by a
stratagem and some slaughtered at an evening banquet. Three survivors
fled to organize rebellion in Galatia. In Ionia, Mithridates resolved to
deal finally with Chios, whose citizens he had suspected of disloyalty ever
since some Chiots had collided with his flagship at the siege of Rhodes.
What now followed was a warning to all the states of Asia of what would
happen if Mithridates held them suspect. He had already demanded the
confiscation of the property of Chiots who had fled to Sulla: now his
general Zenobius seized the walls, disarmed the citizens and sent the
children of the most prominent to Erythrae as hostages. In a bitter letter
he listed his grievances against the Chiots and imposed 4 fine of 2,000
talents. They collected temple ornaments and the women’s jewellery and
paid up, but were accused of delivering short measure. They were led out
of the theatre where they had been assembled, men, women and children,
to be deported by ship to Mithridates’ power base on the Black Sea. (This
Achaemenid-style deportation was actually aborted by the people of
Heraclea Pontica, who freed many of the Chiots when they reached the
Black Sea.) The Ephesians then openly revolted, cancelling debts and
taking other measures to maintain political unity, though they should
have been a stronghold of the ‘Cappadocian Faction’, and other cities as
far north as Smyrna and south as Tralles followed suit. Mithridates sent
an army to reduce those in revolt — Colophon, Ephesus, Hypaepa,
Metropolis, Sardis — and take terrible vengeance on those captured. In an
attempt to stave off further desertions he proclaimed freedom for cities
still loyal, cancellation of debts, citizenship for resident foreigners and
freedom to slaves;®! but defections continued. Four former supporters in
Smyrna and on Lesbos formed a conspiracy, which one of them betrayed
to Mithridates: the king himself is said to have overheard the final session
at which the plot was hatched, hiding under a couch. The conspirators
were tortured and executed. Further inquiries implicated another eighty

% Chiots: Ath, v1.266; revolt: App. M/th.48; Oros. v1.2.8. Ephesus: SIG 742. Mithridates is not
likely to have sympathized with the lower orders beyond his political interest: de Ste Croix 1981 (A
100) 525; Magie 1950 (a 67) 1 222-6; McGing 1986 (D 35) 126-30. Nor did the whole of the lower
orders support him: Bernhardt 1985 (a 10) 33-64.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

160 §. MITHRIDATES

citizens of Pergamum, and denunciations spread into other cities. The
total killed in this witch hunt for Roman sympathizers was 1,600. (On
the other hand, the following year those who had sided with the
‘Cappadocians’ were killed, committed suicide, or fled to Mithridates in
Pontus.) Some time late in 86 or early in 85 Cos and Cnidus defected from
Mithridates, on the appearance of Lucullus with a fleet: Rhodes added its
ships to those of Lucullus, and, sailing up the coast of Ionia, they drove
the ‘Cappadocian Faction’ out of Colophon and Chios. Mithridates’
cherished mastery of the sea was now under challenge.

The wild card in the Roman pack was the consular army of Flaccus,
sent by Sulla’s enemies in Rome. It had marched across Epirus and
Macedonia and Thrace to Byzantium, but Flaccus had acquired a
reputation for greed, harshness and unfairness, and there were deser-
tions and indiscipline. C. Flavius Fimbria, usually thought to have been
Flaccus’ /egatus,°? seized the fasces and drove Flaccus off, with the
support of the troops: the repulsed commander hid ignominiously in a
house and then fled to Chalcedon and on to Nicomedia, where he found
refuge within the walls, but Fimbria pursued him even there and had him
dragged out of a well, where he was hiding, and beheaded. Fimbria
appointed himself commander of the consul’s army, and was in due time
recognized as such by Cinna’s regime in Rome: they needed a vigorous
commander — and they had got one.

From such unpromising beginnings this Roman army, now under a
competent, however literally ‘self-made’ general, began to have suc-
cesses in Bithynia, though descending to the shocking despoliation of
cities such as Nicomedia and Cyzicus as well. Fimbria’s army fought
several battles against Mithridates’ generals, including a resounding one
on the river Rhyndacus against a quartet of them. Mithridates’ son
escaped from that action to join him at Pergamum, but Fimbria’s speed
was such that the king himself had to leave in haste for the coast at Pitane.
There, Fimbria almost encircled him with earthworks, leaving only the
coastal side as an exit for him. Lucullus was off the coast with his fleet at
the time, but refused to help corner Mithridates and hand the credit for
completing the war to Sulla’s adversaries; so Mithridates escaped by sea,
later to attend his conference with Sulla. Fimbria rampaged through
parts of Asia, punishing the ‘Cappadocian Faction’ and devastating the
territory of any city that shut its gates to him. At Ilium, he treacherously
burnt down the town and slaughtered its inhabitants, even though he
had been admitted.

To Mithridates an agreement with Sulla, who now had a fleet to

8 Pluc. Luc. 2-3; Diod. xxxvitt.8; Livy Per. Lxxx; Plut. Mar. 43; Magie 1950 (A 67) 1 226-8; Bulst
1964 (C 35) 319-20. Fimbria’s status: commonly said to have been praefectus equitum and legatus;
according to Appian a privatus on Flaccus’ staff; perhaps ex-quaestor, Lintott 1971 (C 100).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE TREATY OF DARDANUS 161

pursue him into Asia, was preferable to the humiliations he was now
undergoing. There was a go-between of standing in Archelaus, and
terms had been on the table for about a year, to get used to. The hostility
of Fimbria’s army to Sulla might yet be used as a bargaining counter; so
might the still large Mithridatic fleet, and Sulla’s starved financial
situation.

XII. THE TREATY OF DARDANUS, THE FATE OF ASIA AND THE
FELICITY OF SULLA

The summit meeting between Sulla and Mithridates took place at
Dardanus in the Troad, probably in autumn 85 B.c.%* It opened with
complaints by Mithridates about Roman dealings with him over western
Asia Minor before 89; Sulla replied with a speech going back to his own
dispositions in Cappadocia when he was commander in Cilicia, but
concluding with the contemporary fact of the collapse of Mithridates’
adventure in Greece with the loss of 160,000 men. Sulla insisted on the
terms already adumbrated in his talks with Archelaus; Mithridates was
compelled to consent, and Sulla welcomed him to the formal cessation of
hostilities with a kiss of friendship. If he was to pay 2,000 talents
indemnity, it was after all only the sum demanded as reparations from
Chios alone by his general Zenobius. He was to evacuate the part of
Paphlagonia in dispute; the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia were to
get back their kingdoms, and Sulla’s legate, Curio, was to see to that,
once Fimbria had been eliminated. Prisoners were to receive their
freedom and deserters to be handed over for punishment. Seventy ships
and 500 archers were to be handed over. In return, Mithridates was
confirmed as king in his own prosperous and untouched kingdom, and
his Black Sea empire was intact. No king, not even Antiochus the Great,
had emerged so little scathed after a full-scale war with Rome.

Mithridates sailed away through the Bosporus to his Pontic fastness
with another twenty years of opposition to Rome ahead of him, for all
that he was now an ‘ally of the Roman people’. Fortunately for him,
Rome’s war with the allies in Italy had been superseded by civil war, and
Sulla had western preoccupations: he was prepared to insist on his terms,
but not to load them with provocations that might goad the king into
further present resistance.% As for Fimbria, his legions submitted on
Sulla’s approach, and after an assassination attempt on Sulla had failed

93 For the speech given to Mithridates by Sallust: Raditsa 1969-70 (D 54).

% Date: Reinach 1890 (D 55) 190-206; Ormerod CAH 1x! 256; Magie 1950 (a 67) 1 229-31; 11
1110, n. 58; Liebmann-Frankfort 1968 (D 276) 183f,; Sherwin—White 1984 (D 291) 143-8.

% So Plut. Sulla 22. 5, but 3,000 Memnon FGrH 434 F 25.

% Florus 1.40; Badian 1970 (c 13) 19; Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 104-5; 122-7; 1987 (C 94) 117-61;
Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 144-8; McGing 1986 (D 35) 130.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

162 §. MITHRIDATES

and a proffered conference had been declined, he committed suicide. His
legions, in fact, were left behind in Asia to become its garrison under
Murena.

The settlement of the cities of Asia — reparations, rewards, administra-
tive and financial arrangements for the future — was set in hand. Sulla
took his time over it, not leaving Ephesus until 84. Even then he dallied
in Athens, being initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries and appropriat-
ing the libraries of his tyrant opponents, before sailing to Italy with his
by then enormous fleet of 1,200 ships and arriving in Rome in the spring
of 83. The collaborating cities, and the ‘Cappadocian Faction’ in the
others, were now to pay heavily.°?7 Some eight or nine cities were
rewarded with keeping their own government and with the title of
‘Friend of the Roman People’: Chios, Rhodes, the Carian cities Stratoni-
cea, Aphrodisias and Tabae, some Lycian cities, Magnesia-on-the-
Maeander, and Ilium far away to the north-west. All had resisted
Mithridates. Rhodes even received back control of her Peraea, the
mainland coast opposite the island, which she had forfeited in the
aftermath of the Third Macedonian War.°8 Such exceptions made the
reparations forced on the other cities all the more harsh. Sulla’s troops
were quartered on the errant cities over the winter: each legionary was to
receive four tetradrachms a day, and centurions fifty drachmas. Slaves
freed by Mithridates had to be returned to their masters. If cities resisted
this harsh treatment, a massacre of free men and slaves followed.
Communities were sold into slavery and city walls pulled down. Sulla
called the representatives of the cities to Ephesus and delivered a
harangue justifying Rome’s policy towards them since the time of
Antiochus III and the revolt of Aristonicus; he finished by reimposing
the unpaid taxes of the last five years. The appalling total of 20,000
talents was to be paid (perhaps 8,000 indemnity and 2,400 arrears of tax
annually since 89 B.c.): coming on the top of the billeting and the
destruction of private and public fortunes, it was crippling, far into the
future. Loans had to be sought at high interest, theatres, gymnasia,
harbours and city walls had to be mortgaged. Although Sulla’s quaestor
Lucullus is said to have been scrupulously honest, the communities of
Asia were ina parlous state for years, and some of the arrangements were

97 Memnon FGrH 434 F 25 says the cities that had supported Mithridates were given an
‘amnesty’, but it did not let them off the burdens. Most hardly treated were Adramyttium,
Clazomenae, Ephesus, Miletus, Mytilene, Pergamum, Tralles and perhaps Phocaea, with Caunus
suffering because of unwillingness to be subject to Rhodes, Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 110-12; 114-15.

88 Chios: SIG 785; Rhodes: Strab. xtv.2.3; App. Mith. 61; BCiv. v.7; Stratonicea: OGIS 441;
Tabae: OGIS 442; Aphrodisias: Reynolds 1982 (8 226) 1-4; Lycians: ILLRP 174-5; Magnesia:
Strab. xr1.3.35: Ilium: App. Adis. 53.

® Asia was organized into forty-four regions, Cassiod. Chron. (Greenidge-Clay p. 191), perhaps
for direct tax-gathering, the Asian publicani having been wiped out: Brunt 1956 (D 254).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE TREATY OF DARDANUS 163

being endorsed or revised by the Senate for some time afterwards.! Nor
were all recalcitrancies immediately suppressed: as late as 81/80 Mytilene
was still defiant and had to be eventually subdued by Minucius
Thermus.!0!

The destruction of cities, the financial ruin of those that survived, the
liberations of slaves and the proclamations requiring their re-enslave-
ment, the removal of the fleets that had controlled the Aegean, first that
of Mithridates, then that of Sulla, all led to a great increase in pirate
activity. The pirate squadrons progressed from taking ships to assault-
ing forts, harbours and even cities, among which were the island of
Samos, Clazomenae in Ionia and Iasus in Caria. They are said to have
robbed the temple of the Cabiri on Samothrace of treasure worth 1,000
talents at a time when Sulla himself was on the island.'02 Even so, he may
not have realized the scale of the monster he had helped to conjure up
and the threat it was to pose throughout the Mediterranean down to 67
B.C.

Mithridates had been lucky to get the treaty he did and to win Sulla’s
support for his status as ‘king and friend of Rome’. However, the
outlook for him and for Pontus in the future was uncertain. At Rome,
many thought the terms of the peace were not fair punishment for
Mithridates’ crimes: they had, after all, been granted by a political
faction, that of Sulla, albeit the dominant one at the moment. There was
nothing to prevent future Roman provocation designed to push Mithri-
dates into another war in which he could be made to pay more adequately
for the first one. The relative weakness of the Pontic field armies had
been thoroughly exposed by Sulla’s five legions, and even quite small
forces like Bruttius Sura’s, and renegade armies, like that of Fimbria, had
been able to defeat Mithridates’ generals. Those revelations made such a
provocation all the more likely, and within two years Murena was
invading Pontus in response to a call from Archelaus.'® In the mean
time, between 83 and 80, Mithridates was to be kept busy with revolts in
his Black Sea empire, in Colchis, and among the tribes north and east of
the Cimmerian Bosporus.

Sulla, by contrast, was everywhere victorious, having recovered all
Mithridates’ conquests in less than three years. Even his image and
propaganda outdid Mithridates, though in terms more appropriate to
the Republican than the Iranian tradition. His byname among the
Greeks, after he had been induced to dedicate a double-headed axe to
Aphrodite of Aphrodisias in Caria, was ‘Epaphroditus’, and a counter to
Mithridates’ identification with Dionysus. From the date of his triumph

100 Magie 1950 (a 67) 1 232-40; Brunt 1956 (D 254). Sherwin—White 1984 (D 291) 148; 244f.

101 Mattingly 1979 (D 283) 1494 with n. 10. 102 App. Mith. 63.
103 He argued that the Peace of Dardanus had not been ratified: App. Mith. 64; Glew 1981 (D 19).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

164 5. MITHRIDATES

he took officially (he had had it unofficially for a long time) the cognomen
‘Felix’, ‘The Fortunate’, an answer to Mithridates’ names of ‘Megas’ and
‘Basileus Basileon’.!* And if Mithridates had his ‘historians in the
service of, and writing to please, barbarian kings’! so did Sulla have his
partisan writers, and his own commentarii, to influence contemporaries
and posterity. His next business was with his enemies at Rome.

104 Vell. Pat. 11.24; App. BCiv. 1.76; Balsdon 1951 (c 18). 105 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.4.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 6

SULLA

ROBIN SEAGER

I. SULLA, SULPICIUS AND MARIUS, 88 B.c.

As the year 89 drew to its close, the predominant feeling at Rome may
well have been one of relief. The fall of Asculum meant that the Social
War was to all intents and purposes won, though isolated pockets of
resistance lingered. Yet even the most cursory essay in divination should
have revealed grave causes for concern about the future. The war had
been bitterly contested, and resentment was bound to simmer. Rome’s
concessions had been churlish and grudging. It seems that not all the
Italians had yet been enfranchised, and the confinement of those who had
within a minority of tribes made it clear that the Romans were
determined to limit to the best of their ability the value of the prize that
their allies had wrested from them. Thus the Italian question had by no
means been settled: the struggle for even the most nominal equality still
had much of its course to run, though the Italians could take comfort
from the knowledge that there were still men at Rome who, for whatever
motive, were prepared to champion their interests.

Nor did the manner in which the outbreak of war had been exploited
in pursuit of private enmities give any grounds for hope that in internal
affairs a spirit of conciliation would now prevail. The murder of Livius
Drusus had gone unpunished, and the contentious operations of the
quaestio Variana had inflicted wounds that were still unhealed. The war
had enforced a temporary lull in political infighting, but now that it was
over revival of the feuds of 90 could only exacerbate an already delicate
situation and diminish further the always remote likelihood of a unified
and statesmanlike approach to the problems of Italy. It could be safely
predicted that the times would continue interesting and that the new
citizens would have a large part to play.

The consulship of 88, to which Sulla was elected in the last weeks of
89, together with his friend Q. Pompeius Rufus, might have seemed no
more than the just, if not inevitable, reward for his military achievements
during the foregoing year. Yet it seems that he encountered competition
from an unusual source: C. Iulius Caesar Strabo, aedile in 90, who had
not held the praetorship, but nevertheless wanted to stand for the

165

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

166 6. SULLA

consulship. Unfortunately the date of Strabo’s attempt cannot be
regarded as absolutely certain: it is just possible that he tried to stand in
88 for 87. But the most natural reading of Cicero’s accounts of the
opposition to Strabo by the tribunes P. Sulpicius and P. Antistius
suggests that it belongs to the beginning of their term of office, in
December 89.! If this is correct, then it deserves to be stressed that Strabo
would be standing in direct competition with Sulla: since both were
patricians, both could not be elected. That fact may give a clue to one of
Strabo’s motives for seeking the consulship at this precise time. He had
been on bad terms with Sulla for nearly a decade, and it would no doubt
have pleased him to keep his enemy out.? But that was not the only
attraction of a consulship in 88. To be singled out as a special case by
securing exemption from the normal carsus would of course be a
worthwhile achievement in any year — that seems to have been the only
motive for the ill-judged attempt of Q. Lucretius A fella under Sulla. But
it may well already have been apparent that to hold the office in this
particular year might bring a further prize: a command against
Mithridates.

It has been said that Strabo could not have hoped for the command,
even if he gained the consulship, because of his relative youth and lack of
military experience.* That need not be the case. Custom still demanded
that major military commands should be assigned to consuls: the means
adopted to give Marius control in both the Jugurthine and Cimbric Wars
bear witness to the strength of the practice. At this point it would hardly
have been possible to predict such a drastic interference with tradition as
Sulpicius was soon to essay. If therefore Strabo could obtain the
consulship, he might indeed get the command as well, a golden
opportunity for glory and profit. The prospect of the Mithridatic
command also probably explains the interest of another unusual would-
be candidate at the elections of 89: Cn. Pompeius Strabo, consul in that
year, but eager to hold office again without a break.5 However, it seems
unlikely that either Strabo was allowed to stand.° At all events, Sulla and
Pompeius Rufus were elected, and shortly afterwards Sulla’s daughter
was married to Pompeius’ son. More attention was attracted by Sulla’s
own new marriage. He divorced his wife Cloelia on the grounds of her
sterility and married Metella, widow of M. Scaurus. Some of the nobility
are said to have disapproved of Sulla’s presumption, but the Metelli were
always ready to establish ties with men of talent who lacked other

' Cic. Har. Resp. 43; Brat. 226. Badian 1969 (Cc 12) 481ff; Katz 1977 (c 82); Keaveney 1979 (c 85);
contra, Mitchell 1975 (c 114) 201; Lintott 1971 (C 99) 449ff.

2 Keaveney 1979 (C 85) 454. 3 For the form of the name see Badian JRS 1967, 227f.
Luce 1970 (c 101) 191; Keaveney 1979 (c 85) 453; contra, Katz 1977 (c 82) 471ff.

Vell. Pat. 1.21.1, Katz 1976 (c 80) 329 n. 6; contra, Keaveney 1978 (c 84) 240.
For Caesar, see Katz 1977 (c 82) 62; contra, Mitchell 1975 (C 114) 199.

awa

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA, SULPICIUS AND MARIUS 167

advantages: Scaurus himself had been a case in point, and the young
Pompey would one day be another.

It is chiefly the opposition of Sulpicius that lends importance to Caesar
Strabo’s ambitions. P. Sulpicius (he probably did not bear the cognomen
Rufus)’ was not only an orator of some distinction but already known as
an associate of Livius Drusus, C. Cotta and Pompeius Rufus, apparently
pledged to press on with the integration of the Italians into the Roman
commonwealth which Drusus had tried to initiate in 91. By 88 that
meant in practical terms the distribution of the new citizens throughout
all the thirty-five tribes instead of trying to restrict the value of their
votes by assigning them to only a limited number of tribes voting last,
whether old or freshly created. It is reasonable to suppose that Sulpicius
intended from the first to introduce a measure to that effect, and his stand
against Strabo’s request for a dispensation may be interpreted in that
light. His action benefited Sulla more than anyone else, but also Sulla’s
running-mate Pompeius Rufus. Rufus was already a close friend of
Sulpicius, and Sulla’s political views may have been known to coincide at
least in part with those of Livius Drusus.8 Sulpicius will therefore have
hoped to secure at worst the benevolent neutrality, if not the active
support, of two consuls for whom his programme might have some
attractions in itself and who were also in his debt for services rendered in
the cause of their election.

More puzzling is Sulpicius’ other recorded early action: the veto of a
bill which recalled exiles on the ground that they had not been allowed to
plead their case, even though he later introduced a law himself in favour
of the same exiles. The identity of these exiles has been much discussed,
and no solution is free from objections and difficulties. Perhaps the most
likely suggestion is that they were the victims of the guaestio Variana.9 If
so, a further puzzle ensues: why should Sulpicius veto a measure which
would have brought back to Rome the surviving supporters of Livius
Drusus, men who were his friends and shared his political ideals, not
least among them C. Cotta? Certainty is impossible, but it may be that
once again Sulpicius was concerned to secure the good will of Sulla, who
may have been opposed to such a move, particularly if the anonymous
proposal against which Sulpicius interposed his veto had the backing of
Marius.!° Sulpicius might well have thought it worthwhile to leave his
friends in exile a while longer if that sacrifice would help to win him
Sulla’s support for the fair distribution of the new citizens. Indeed, some
at least of his friends might even have agreed with him.

But if Sulpicius’ calculations had run along these lines, he was to be

7 Mattingly 1975 (c 111). 8 Gabba 1973 (c 55) 383ff.
° Keaveney 1979 (C 85) 455ff; contra, Badian 1969 (c 12) 487ff, Lintott 1971 (C 99) 453.
10 Porra 1973 (C 118) 23f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

168 6. SULLA

cruelly disappointed. Sulla may have shared Livius Drusus’ views on the
need to restore the authority of the Senate, but he had no commitment to
the cause of the Italians. When Sulpicius introduced a bill to distribute
both the new citizens and also freedmen throughout the thirty-five
tribes, he met vigorous opposition not only from the old citizens but also
from Sulla and even from Pompeius Rufus. From Sulpicius’ standpoint
this must have seemed an inexcusable betrayal, and the violence of his
reaction is not hard to understand. If he was to have any hope of carrying
out his programme now that Sulla and Rufus had let him down, he had
urgent need ofa fresh source of support. He did not have far to look. The
command against Mithridates had been allotted to Sulla (which may
mean that Rufus too had coveted it). But there was still one potential
rival in the field: Marius, who was not only eager to have the command
but might take particular pleasure in securing it at the expense of Sulla.
That Marius and Sulpicius should be drawn together seems almost
inevitable, though there is now no way of telling which took the
initiative in forming their alliance. There can, however, be little doubt
about its terms. Marius would lend all the support he could muster,
much of it equestrian, to Sulpicius’ proposal on the voting rights of the
Italians, and in return Sulpicius would promulgate a bill depriving Sulla
of the command against Mithridates and assigning it instead to Marius —
constitutionally a much more dramatic step than Marius’ acquisition of
the command against Jugurtha, when he had been at least a consul in
office. But for the moment this part of the bargain remained a closely
guarded secret.

In addition to his distribution bill, Sulpicius also brought in other
measures, one limiting the debts that senators might incur and one
which, reversing his earlier attitude, provided for the recall of the exiles
on the ground that they had been expelled by force. This may have been
in part a favour to Marius, if Marius had indeed supported the previous
proposal which Sulpicius had vetoed, but regardless of Marius’ views on
the subject Sulpicius must have felt that since his break with Sulla he no
longer had any reason not to try to restore his friends. Surprisingly, he
offered nothing to the urban plebs that might have made it more
amenable to his Italian bill, and so it continued to resist him. Sulpicius’
clash with Caesar Strabo had ended ominously in violence on the streets,
and he showed no hesitation now. He is said to have surrounded himself
with a private army 3,000-strong and a bodyguard of 600 equites, whom
he called his ‘anti-Senate’."! If this is true, he will surely have meant that
they would serve to protect him against any such use of force by the
Senate as had brought about the deaths of the Gracchi and Saturninus,
not as an alternative council of state. The consuls must have feared that,

‘| Accepted: Keaveney 1983 (c 91) 54; contra, c.g. Badian 1969 (c 12) 485.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA, SULPICIUS AND MARIUS 169

despite the widespread hostility to the bill, Sulpicius would succeed in
intimidating the voters, and so they tried to block its passage by
declaring a suspension of public business (sustitium) or a special holiday
(feriae imperativae).'*

The rioting worsened, and Sulpicius led a band of armed supporters
into a meeting summoned by the consuls. He denounced the suspension
of business as illegal and demanded its immediate withdrawal, so that
voting on the bill could proceed. The consuls refused, Sulpicius
threatened their lives, and fighting broke out, in which Rufus’ son, who
had been foolishly provocative, was one of numerous casualties. Rufus
himself escaped, while Sulla was forced to take refuge in the house of
Marius, though he later denied this humiliating fact in his memoirs.
Clearly the two men must have come to some arrangement. Sulla was for
the moment in a desperately weak position and must have agreed to lift
the ban on public business and allow Sulpicius’ legislation to go forward.
Marius need have offered little in return: perhaps no more than a promise
that Sulla’s life would then be safe. It would be interesting to know
whether Sulla expressed an intention of returning to the siege of Nola
(unfinished business from the Social War on which he had been engaged
until Sulpicius’ activities had forced him to return to Rome) and whether
Marius agreed to let him go. If the plan to deprive Sulla of the
Mithridatic command had already been revealed, then Marius would
surely have hesitated to allow him to rejoin his army, but it had not. So
when Sulla left Rome, with Marius’ blessing or not, he will have done so
simply because he thought that Nola would be the safest place for him.

The ban on public business was duly raised, and Sulla withdrew to
Campania. His headquarters were probably at Capua, which he visited
on his way to Nola.'3 Sulpicius was now able to enact his laws without
further effective opposition — the old citizens must have been cowed by
the threat of fresh violence — and Sulla found out that Marius had tricked
him, for the bill to transfer the Mithridatic command was now published
and passed, though Sulla, unlike Pompeius Rufus, whose treachery in
Sulpicius’ eyes had been greater, was not stripped of his consulship.!4 So
Sulla was presented with a choice. He could acknowledge the law as
valid. To do so would mean total humiliation at the hands of his
opponents, the end of his political career and perhaps even further
danger to his life. Or he could attempt to reverse it and regain his
command. He can hardly have been in any doubt. Like Caesar he was an
outsider in politics, totally self-centred in pursuit of his ambitions,
always ready to break the rules of the political game to achieve his
objective. But unlike Caesar he had strong views, already well defined by

'2 Cf. Keaveney 1983 (c 91) 57. 13. Keaveney 1983 (C 91) 59.
‘4 But see Keaveney 1983 (c 91) Gof.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

170 6. SULLA

88, on what remedies were needed to set the Roman state to rights, and
perhaps a belief that he was divinely appointed for the task. One of his
basic constitutional convictions was that tribunician legislation in
defiance of the Senate and the consuls should not be permitted. This
coincidence of political principle and personal advantage was extremely
convenient, but no less genuine for that. If Sulla hesitated it can only
have been because he was not sure how his army would react. That the
mass of senatorial and popular opinion would be wholly against him if he
marched on Rome he must have known, but if his men were prepared to
follow him the disapproval of others would be of no practical import-
ance, and once he had succeeded he would then be able to impose his
own interpretation on events.

He sounded out the army with some caution, complaining of the
behaviour of Marius and Sulpicius towards him and implanting in the
men the suspicion, surely false, that if Marius secured the command he
would levy other troops and leave them behind, so that they would lose
their share of the handsome profits of an easy war against effete orientals.
Whether or not they believed this tale, the troops understood what was
expected of them and urged him to lead them to Rome. Sulla’s officers on
the other hand, when they realized what was afoot, all returned to the
city, with the exception of his quaestor, almost certainly L. Lucullus.'5
Sulla also had the support of Pompeius Rufus, whom he still treated as
his colleague, though it is unclear whether Rufus joined him before he
left Nola or at a later point on the march. When military tribunes sent by
Marius to take over the army arrived in the camp, they were stoned to
death by the troops. Any nagging hesitation that Sulla may have felt was
eased by proofs of divine approval. These will have meant much to him,
for there is no reason to doubt the depth and sincerity of his religious
beliefs, even if some of the signs he recorded in his memoirs may be
regarded with suspicion.'¢ First the soothsayer Postumius promised him
success, then a dream sent by the goddess Ma-Bellona revealed that he
would strike down his enemies.

So the march on Rome began. Not only Sulpicius and Marius but the
Senate and people as a whole were appalled at Sulla’s action. It will have
needed little pressure to persuade the Senate to send a series of embassies
to try to halt the advance. But Sulla was confident now. When the first
senatorial embassy asked him why he was marching against his father-
land, he boldly replied that he was coming to free it from tyrants. His
soldiers went further, manhandling and insulting the envoys. Two
further delegations were given a similar answer by Sulla, and he sent
through them an invitation to the Senate, Sulpicius and Marius to meet
him outside the city in the Campus Martius. It is true that Sulla promised

'S Badian 1964 (A 2) 220; Levick 1982 (C 97). 16 Keaveney 1983 (H 68).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA, SULPICIUS AND MARIUS 171

to abide by any agreement reached at such a meeting, but the implied
estimate of his own importance in relation to the organs of the state is
perhaps more revealing. A final embassy, inspired by Sulpicius and
Marius in the hope of gaining time, asked Sulla not to come within five
Roman miles of the city until the Senate had had time to deliberate
further on the matter. Sulla and Rufus duly promised to make camp, but
continued their march as soon as the envoys had left.

The result of the attack on Rome could never be in doubt, for the
defenders had no regular troops at their disposal. What is striking is the
fierceness of the resistance Sulla encountered. The people, though
unarmed, pelted his soldiers from the roof-tops until he threatened to
fire their houses, while his men almost broke when they were finally
confronted by Marius’ makeshift forces — only Sulla’s personal daring
shamed them into making a stand. But when Sulla summoned the
detachment he had kept in reserve, Marius was driven back to the temple
of Tellus, and after a proclamation offering freedom to any slave who
would join his cause had failed to bear fruit he was forced to take to
flight.

Sulla stationed troops all over the city, while he and Rufus remained
vigilant throughout the night to ensure that no incidents disturbed the
peace. On the following day he summoned the Senate and caused it to
give official sanction to his private quarrel by declaring Marius, his son,
Sulpicius and nine others who had fled with them to be enemies of the
state on the grounds that they had stirred up sedition, fought against the
consuls and offered freedom to slaves. The decree of the Senate was then
reinforced by a law. For Sulla this unprecedented step had obvious
advantages. It identified his cause, completely and instantly, with that of
law and order and the res publica itself and retrospectively justified the
march on Rome; it enabled him to condemn his enemies to death without
delay in a situation where the senatus consultum ultimum would have been
out of place; and by depriving them of their citizenship it appeared to
rule out any subsequent complaint about the violation of their rights.
But its constitutional implications were highly disquieting: it meant that
men could be pronounced guilty of crimes against the state and
sentenced to death without any semblance of trial. This fact may have
weighed at least as much as their connexion by marriage with Q. Mucius
Scaevola the augur, who flatly refused to admit that a man with Marius’
record of service to the state could be called an enemy of Rome.!7 Of the
twelve men outlawed, although the pursuit was keen, only Sulpicius was
killed, betrayed by a slave. Marius, after a series of romantic adventures,
made his way to safety in Africa, where he was joined by several others of
the exiles, including his son.!8

17 Val. Max. 111.8.5; Bauman 1973 (¢ 21); Katz 1975 (c 79). 18 Carney 1961 (C 39) 112ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

172 6. SULLA

All the measures enacted by Sulpicius after the original suspension of
public business by the consuls were now declared invalid because they
had been passed by force. Thus Sulla was restored to the Mithridatic
command and Pompeius to his consulship, and the distribution of the
enfranchised Italians throughout all the tribes was annulled. Had Sulla
had the wisdom and generosity to re-enact that law in his own name,
much subsequent turmoil and bloodshed might have been avoided.
Instead, he brought in laws of a very different nature. Only Appian
records these constitutional measures and his account is far from clear,
but there is no reason to dismiss the legislation of 88, shortlived as it was,
as a mere retrojection of that of the dictatorship.!? Sulla’s overall
objective at least is already clear: to prevent any magistrate, especially a
tribune, from acting in concert with the people in disregard or defiance
of the wishes of the Senate, and in general to strengthen the Senate and
restore its predominance in the state, a task which was certainly urgent,
as its poor showing when confronted first with Sulpicius, then with Sulla
himself had made abundantly clear. Therefore Sulla enacted that no
proposal should be brought before the people without the prior
approval of the Senate, that the comitia centuriata should be restored to
their ‘Servian’ form (see Vol. vir, pp. 199ff) by the removal of the tribal
element from the voting procedure (this seems more likely than the
alternative interpretation that Sulla abolished the legislative powers of
the comitia tributa), so that, as Appian ingenuously puts it, voting would
be controlled by the rich and wise, not by the poor and headstrong, and
that 300 of the best men should be enrolled in the Senate.29 Other
measures, of which no details are unfortunately given, were taken to
curtail the tribunician power; these: may or may not have prefigured
exactly those that were introduced in the dictatorship. Sulla was also
aware Of the financial crisis caused by the Social War and aggravated by
the loss of Asia to Mithridates. He passed a law to remit a tenth of
existing debts and fix interest rates for the future. Finally, he is said to
have founded colonies, and, though no settlements appear in fact to have
been made, he may well have intended to do so. Nobody knew better
than he that it would be prudent to demobilize and disperse the armies of
the Social War, and he may also have hoped to decrease the numbers of
the urban plebs. .

Though Sulla is not accused of passing these laws by force, the
presence of his troops in the city must have done much to ensure that
they were accepted without opposition, though it is also surely true that
many senators, however much they disapproved of Sulla as an individual
and of the march on Rome, will have found his legislation entirely
acceptable. But it was vital to the credibility of his posture as liberator

19 Keaveney 1983 (c 91) 81ff. 20 Gabba 1958 (B 40) 171f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CINNANUM TEMPUS 173

and champion of law and order that the army should remain no longer
than was absolutely necessary. So, once his laws had been passed, he sent
it back to Capua. But as soon as the threat had been removed opposition
made itself felt. Friends of the exiles began to agitate on their behalf and
there were rumours of plots against the lives of Sulla and Pompeius.
Nevertheless, Sulla knew that it would destroy his image if he interfered
too blatantly with the elections, and so he brought no improper pressure
to bear. The results gave further proof of his unpopularity. His nephew,
Sex. Nonius Sufenas, failed to gain the tribunate, and although Sulla was
able to prevent the election of Q. Sertorius, he could not keep out the
nephew of Marius, M. Marius Gratidianus. His candidate for the
consulship, P. Servilius Vatia, was also rejected, though he had just
obtained a triumph from his unknown praetorian province. The consuls
elected, who may have been friends, were Cn. Octavius, who had no ties
with Sulla but was thought to be opposed to reform, and L. Cornelius
Cinna, whose success apparently gave hope to the friends of the exiles,
though he had no connexion with Marius and at the time of his election
there was nothing to suggest that he would take up the cause of the new
citizens.2! Perhaps before agreeing to announce the result of the election,
Sulla had taken the curious step of binding both consuls designate by an
oath to uphold his arrangements. He can hardly have hoped that this
would prove an effective restraint, but it would at least serve to put Cinna
in the wrong before gods and men if he tampered with Sulla’s laws and
give Sulla religious and moral grounds for any eventual reprisals he
might feel moved to make.

By now considerations of his own security, his promises to his troops,
and the requirements of the Mithridatic War all made it imperative that
Sulla leave Italy without further delay. However, he was concerned for
the safety of Pompeius Rufus. He therefore brought a measure before
Senate and People to give his colleague Italy as his province with the
troops at present commanded by Pompeius Strabo. An attempt to recall
Strabo was frustrated by the veto ofa tribune, C. Herennius,”2 but Rufus
nevertheless went out to take over the army. Shortly after his arrival he
was set upon and killed by the troops, who were almost certainly acting
on Strabo’s orders. Strabo rebuked them, but took no further disciplin-
ary action, and no more attempts were made to relieve him of command.

Il. CINNANUM TEMPUS, 87-84 B.C.

Cinna’s first act, perhaps even before he took office, was to prompt a
tribune of 87, M. Vergilius or Verginius, to institute a prosecution

21 Katz 1976 (c 81) s05ff; Keaveney 1983 (c 91) 76ff.
22 Sall. H. 1.21, Badian 1935 (c $) 107; contra, Twyman 1979 (c 148) 187ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

174 6. SULLA

against Sulla. His aim will have been not to drive Sulla out of Italy — Sulla
was going of his own accord — but to prevent his departure by stripping
him of his imperium and securing his condemnation. The ploy failed: no
doubt men remembered only too well the last attempt to deprive Sulla of
his command, and he was able to ignore the tribune’s summons and
depart for the Mithridatic War, leaving a detachment under Ap.
Claudius to continue the siege of Nola. For what it was worth, Cinna had
proved that Sulla’s respect for law and order did not weigh against his
own advantage, but now he turned to the more serious matter of an
attack on those aspects of Sulla’s legislation that seemed most
vulnerable.

However, if Appian can be believed, it was the friends of the exiles
who first encouraged the newly enfranchised Italians to renew their
agitation for fair distribution throughout the thirty-five tribes, while a
substantial bribe was needed to interest Cinna in their cause. Whatever
the truth of that matter, once Cinna had declared himself in favour of the
new citizens, matters rapidly came to a head. Octavius predictably took
the opposite side, and both parties armed themselves with daggers.
When Cinna promulgated bills providing for the distribution of the new
citizens and freedmen and for the recall of the exiles, Octavius persuaded
a majority of tribunes to veto.?4 This provoked the new citizens to riot
against the tribunes, and it is possible that the senatus consultum ultimum
was passed. Octavius led his supporters down the Via Sacra into the
Forum and separated the two sides, though he kept out of Cinna’s way.
But then, allegedly on their own initiative, Octavius’ men turned on the
new citizens, many of whom were killed. The swiftness and vigour of
Octavius’ action had taken Cinna by surprise. He had expected that his
superior numbers would carry the day. After an abortive offer of
freedom to the slaves he left the city and at once began a tour of the
neighbouring towns, among them Tibur and Praeneste, in order to
acquire men and money for an attempt to recover his position by force of
arms. He was joined by several of his leading supporters, among them Q.
Sertorius and two tribunes, C. Milonius and Marius Gratidianus.
Eventually he had with him no less than six of the tribunes of the year,
though it is unclear exactly when individual sympathizers left the city:
some tribunes may have disapproved of Cinna’s treatment at the hands
of the Senate more than they disliked his proposals, and so changed
sides.

The Senate promptly took it upon itself first to deprive Cinna of his
consulship, then to declare him a 4ostis, on the ground that in a state of
emergency — which suggests that the senatus consultum ultimum was in

23 Keaveney 1983 (Cc 91) 85£; contra, Bennett 1923 (C 24) 7.
24 Accepted by Katz 1976 (c 81) 49f; contra, Gabba 1958 (B 40) 182.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CINNANUM TEMPUS 175

force ~ he had, though consul, abandoned Rome and offered freedom to
the slaves. In his place was elected L. Cornelius Merula, the flamen Dialis,
though he later claimed that he had not wanted to stand. He had, perhaps
significantly, no connexion with Sulla, while the taboos that surrounded
his priestly office meant that in effect Octavius was left as virtual sole
consul.25 Though Merula was presumably elected by an assembly, the
Senate’s decree against Cinna was never confirmed by a law.?6

Meanwhile Cinna had reached his destination, Nola, where the force
left by Sulla was carrying on the siege. He bribed first the officers at
Capua, then the troops, and made a dramatic appearance before them. He
presented himself in his consular regalia, but then cast aside his fasces
and, apparently treating the army as an assembly, addressed the men in
true popularis fashion: his consulship had been their gift, for they, the
people, had elected him, but now the Senate, by deposing him without
the people’s assent, had set the people’s authority at naught and made a
mockery of the institution of popular elections. His appeal soon had the
desired effect. The soldiers raised him up, set him on his curule chair,
restored his fasces and declared that he was still consul. They promised
to follow wherever he led, and their officers took the oath of loyalty to
Cinna before administering it to the men under their command. From
Nola Cinna continued his visits to Italian towns, claiming that his
sufferings had been the result of his efforts on their behalf. He succeeded
in collecting a considerable sum of money and recruiting large numbers
of men, while more supporters came from Rome to join him. Octavius
and Merula began to fortify the city and tried to raise troops from those
towns which remained loyal and from Cisalpine Gaul. They also
summoned Pompeius Strabo, who still retained command of his army
but had as yet taken no part in the events of 87, to come to the assistance
of his country.

By this time news of the impending conflict had come to Marius in
Africa, and he saw an opportunity to bring about his own return.
Landing in Etruria, he offered his services to Cinna, who acknowledged
him as proconsul and sent him the appropriate insignia. But Marius
scrupulously refused to use them. He went from city to city, recalling his
past achievements and promising to put through the distribution of the
new citizens. By the time he reached Cinna’s camp he had assembled
6,000 men, many of them slaves liberated from ergastula. Sertorius was
allegedly reluctant to accept Marius as an ally, but when Cinna revealed
that he had invited Marius to join them he gave way.

Strabo had encamped outside the Colline Gate, but he took no further
action. His critics claimed that, if he had exerted himself, he could have
nipped Cinna’s enterprise in the bud. But Strabo’s chief concern

25 Cf. Katz 1979 (c 83). 26 Bennett 1923 (c 24) 8ff; Bauman 1973 (c 21) 286ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

176 6. SULLA

remained a second consulship, and he was not prepared to commit
himself until he had sounded out both sides. Cinna divided his forces
into three: the main body under himself and Cn. Papirius Carbo near the
Colline Gate, a detachment under Sertorius on the left bank of the Tiber
upriver from the city, and one downstream under Marius outside the
Porta Ostiensis. His objective was to starve Rome into submission.
Bridges were built across the Tiber both above and below the city to cut
off the supply of food, while Marius, helped by the treachery of an officer
of the garrison, Valerius, captured and sacked the port of Ostia. Cinna
also sent a force north, probably commanded by Marius Gratidianus,
which seized Ariminum to cut off any help that might come from
Cisalpine Gaul. By now Strabo had failed to receive any suitable
promises from Cinna and Marius, and so he at last took the field, fighting
an indecisive engagement against Sertorius in the neighbourhood of the
Janiculum. Desperate for support, the Senate now passed a decree
granting citizenship to all those who had surrendered but not yet
received enfranchisement. It was hoped that this belatedly opportunistic
move would produce massive reinforcements, but though many men
were promised, barely sixteen cohorts were raised. Octavius and Merula
had only one more potential ally on whom they could call: Q. Caecilius
Metellus Pius, praetor in 89, who was still in the field against the
Samnites. They therefore instructed Pius to make peace with the
Samnites on any terms that were consistent with the dignity of Rome and
to come to the relief of the city. But the Samnites demanded citizenship
not only for themselves but for all who had deserted to them, the return
of all prisoners and deserters in Roman hands, and the return of all booty
taken by the Romans, while refusing to surrender any booty they
themselves had acquired. Metellus was reluctant to agree to such
shameful terms and the Senate backed him up in his refusal. Marius and
Cinna at once seized their opportunity, made all the concessions
demanded by the Samnites and so secured their support.

Further treachery now gave the besiegers a chance to take the city. A
military tribune, Ap. Claudius, opened the gates of the Janiculum to
Marius, who let in Cinna and his men. However, the attackers were
driven back across the Tiber by Octavius, who was reinforced by six
cohorts from Strabo’s army, and Milonius, Cinna’s cavalry commander,
was killed. The victory might well have been more conclusive, but
Strabo prevented Octavius from following up his success. He did not
want the war settled before the consular elections, for then his services
would lose their market value. The arrival of Pius, a plausible candidate
for a consulship of 86, had revived Strabo’s interest in a possible deal
with Cinna, with whom he renewed negotiations behind Octavius’ back.
However, Cinna may have responded with an attempt to suborn his

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CINNANUM TEMPUS 177

army and arrange the murder of Strabo and his son, if a curious story in
Plutarch has any basis in fact.2? But the armies of Octavius and Strabo
were now devastated by a plague, of which Strabo himself was the most
distinguished victim. As he lay dying his tent was struck by lightning
during a storm. The shock rendered Strabo unconscious, but when the
Senate sent out C. Cassius, perhaps the consul of 96, to assume command
of his army, the indignity briefly restored him to his senses. However, he
died a few days later and his troops were eventually taken over by
Octavius. Strabo had never been popular, and his recent conduct had
aroused still greater dislike. There were serious disturbances at his
funeral and his body was pulled from its bier and dragged through the
mud, until the tribunes and some other senators intervened to rescue it
from the fury of the mob.

The attackers now developed their plan of cutting off all Rome’s
potential sources of food. Marius set about gaining control of those
towns in which corn was stored; he captured Antium, Aricia, Lanuvium
and other places, some of which were betrayed to him. Then he and
Cinna advanced along the Via Appia in the hope of forcing a decision
before the defenders could find a fresh source of supply. They halted
some 20 kilometres from Rome, probably in the neighbourhood of
Aricia.28 Octavius, Metellus and P. Licinius Crassus (probably the consul
of 97 rather than his son) took up their position on the Alban Mount.
Morale was becoming increasingly bad. Dissatisfied with Octavius’
leadership, the troops had offered Metellus the command, and his
refusal, though proper, had prompted numerous desertions. Of the
generals, Crassus was still eager to fight, but the army’s lack of
enthusiasm led Metellus to try negotiations with Cinna, whom he agreed
to acknowledge as consul, though Octavius on the one side and Marius
on the other ensured that they came to nothing. Thereupon Metellus
abandoned the resistance and withdrew to Africa. Cinna again offered
freedom to slaves in the city who were prepared to join him, and this time
there were many takers. The Senate, afraid that a famine would lead to
riots, sent envoys to Cinna to negotiate for peace. Cinna’s opening
gambit was to ask whether they came to him as consul or as a private
citizen. On this point, surprisingly perhaps, the legates had no instruc-
tions, and so they returned to the city, from which more and more
deserters, free men as well as slaves, now came to join Cinna and Marius
as they continued to advance, without waiting for the envoys to return,
until they were encamped outside the walls.

The Senate thought it wrong that Merula should be deprived of his
consulship when he had done no wrong, but Merula, perhaps in the hope
of saving his life, insisted that he had never wanted office and abdicated

27 Plut. Pomp. 3, see Keaveney 1982 (c 88) 112. 28 Bennett 1923 (C 24) z2off.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

178 6. SULLA

of his own accord, even offering to act as a mediator. Another embassy
was sent to Cinna with orders to address him as consul, and it was as
consul, on his tribunal, that Cinna received the envoys. All they asked
was for him to swear that when he entered the city there would be no
killing. Cinna, however, refused to take such an oath. He did give a
promise that he would not willingly be the cause of any man’s death, but
disquietingly suggested that Octavius keep out of the way. Throughout
these exchanges Marius stood beside Cinna’s chair, grimly and omi-
nously silent. Finally the envoys invited Cinna and Marius to enter the
city, but Marius with a bitter smile refused, saying that as an exile he had
no right to do so. So Cinna went in alone and promulgated a law, either
on his own account or through the agency of the tribunes, recalling not
only Marius but all the exiles, though it is said that Marius waited only
until three or four tribes had voted before entering along with his
personal bodyguard of freed slaves, the Bardyaei.

His friends advised Octavius to flee, but, mindful perhaps of the
judgement he had passed on Cinna, he replied that while he was consul
he would never leave the city and took his seat on his curule chair on the
Janiculum. Attacked by a squadron of cavalry led by C. Marcius
Censorinus, he still refused to run for it and so was killed there. His head
was brought to Cinna and displayed before the rostra: he was the first
consul to suffer such a fate. His death inaugurated a purge of opponents
and personal enemies for which it is clear that Cinna was to blame as
much as Marius.”9 Against most there was no pretence of legal proceed-
ings: C. and L. Caesar, P. Crassus and his elder son, and M. Antonius
were among those hunted down without ceremony, though Antonius’
eloquence almost saved him at the last. In all this the particular
vindictiveness of Marius is evidenced only twice, by his alleged eager-
ness to kill Antonius with his own hands and his refusal of clemency to
Q. Ancharius. The unfortunate Merula and Marius’ old rival Q. Lutatius
Catulus received the semblance of a trial before the people: both
committed suicide without waiting for the verdict. Merula was replaced
as flamen Dialis by the young C. Iulius Caesar, who was to marry Cinna’s
daughter in 84. The appointment invites those with benefit of hindsight
to fascinating if pointless speculation; however, it seems that he was
never inaugurated. It is probable that there were few other victims apart
from those whose names are recorded. We simply do not know why
several of them were killed: opposition to Cinna or participation in the
defence of Rome -will presumably account for those who were not
marked out by Marius as old enemies or false friends. None, signifi-
cantly, can be certainly linked with Sulla in any way.39 Other opponents,
according to Appian, were removed from office. It was probably at this

29 Bennett 1923 (C 24) 31. 3° Bennett 1923 (c 24) 32; Keaveney 1984 (c 93) 115 ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CINNANUM TEMPUS 179

time that Ap. Claudius, commander of the troops at Nola who had
restored Cinna to his consulship, was summoned by a tribune and, when
he failed to appear, was deprived of his :mperium and exiled, and,
although there is no evidence, Metellus Pius must surely have been
treated in similar fashion.

Comprehensive measures were taken against Sulla himself. He was
declared a 4ostis,3! and stripped of his priesthood (not an augurate,
perhaps a pontificate),32 his property was confiscated, his house des-
troyed and his legislation rescinded. His wife Metella and their children,
however, escaped from the city to join Sulla in Greece. Meanwhile the
freed slaves who had formed a significant element in the forces of Marius
and Cinna, especially the Bardyaei, were exploiting the licence given
them to plunder and kill. But eventually, after several warnings from
Cinna, they were surrounded by Gallic troops, perhaps commanded by
Sertorius, and wiped out. The roles assigned to Cinna and Sertorius in
the taking and implementation of this decision and its placing before or
after Marius’ death depend on the readiness or reluctance of the sources
to exculpate Cinna at Marius’ expense and their attitude to Sertorius: to
uncover the truth from behind these veils of prejudice is hardly possible.

Marius and Cinna became consuls for 86, so that Marius at last attained
the seventh consulship, which, he claimed, had been foretold him. The
procedure employed is unclear. Hostile sources say that there were no
elections at all, either this year or in the subsequent years of Cinna’s
tenure of power. It is, however, more likely that elections were held at
which only two candidates were allowed to present themselves.33 The
fulfilment of his destiny does not seem to have made the old and
embittered Marius more amenable: on the first day of his consulship he
caused one Sex. Lucilius or Licinius, tribune in 87, to be thrown from the
Tarpeian Rock. He was looking forward to the Mithridatic command,
but within a fortnight he was dead, perhaps of pneumonia. His funeral
was enlivened by an attempt on the life of Q. Mucius Scaevola the
pontifex maximus, made by Marius’ quaestor, C. Flavius Fimbria.¥4

Thus began the so-called ‘domination of Cinna’, assessment of which
is rendered painfully difficult by the way in which our scrappy sources
are pervaded by the insidious influence of Sulla’s own version of events,
diffused without competition after his victory.*> Detailed attempts have
been made to determine the attitude of contemporaries to Cinna and his
rule.*6 Certain general observations may be made here. From the first

31 Bennett 1923 (c 24) 29; Bauman 1973 (c 21) 290ff; contra, Bulst 1964 (C 35) 319; Hackl 1982 (c
71) 236. 32 Badian 1968 (c 11) 38f; Keaveney 1982 (c 90).

33 Bennett 1923 (c 24) 37, see App BCiv. 1.77.354 on 85.

34 For Fimbria’s office, cf. Lintott 1971 (c 100). 35 Badian 1964 (A 2) 206ff.

36 Badian 1964 (a 2) 216ff. 1964 (B 2); Keaveney 1984 (c 93) 11 8ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

180 6. SULLA

many senators must have had mixed feelings about Sulla. Though they
may have approved of the laws he passed when he got there, they viewed
the march on Rome with unmitigated horror. The desire to avoid a
repetition of the events of 88 and 87 will have inspired many to shun both
extremes and to hope for a reconciliation. But to remain in Rome under
Cinna’s regime and even to hold office need indicate neither whole-
hearted support for Cinna nor a special dislike or fear of Sulla. Those
who did not feel personally threatened had no need to leave Rome, those
who wished to attend the Senate or stand for office had to stay there, and
the temptation to join Sulla at a time when his plans and prospects were
still uncertain must have been slight. However, there must have been
resentment among those whose ambition had kept them in the city at the
promotion block caused by the repeated tenure of the consulship by
Cinna and Carbo. There is certainly nothing to suggest that Sulla ever
thought of treating all those who stayed at home as enemies, as the
Pompeians were to do in 49. In 86 the Su//ani were still in essence Sulla’s
officers. A certain number of refugees came to join him in Greece, but it
was not yet known that Sulla would bring the Mithridatic War to a
premature close and return to Italy in arms. Therefore not all of those
who found it necessary to get out of Rome chose Sulla’s camp as their
refuge. The most noteworthy of those who went elsewhere were
Metellus Pius, who found a haven in Africa thanks to the connexions of
his father Numidicus, and the young M. Crassus, who secured shelter in
Spain, where his family had ties.

Our knowledge of the events of these years is slight and hardly allows
a coherent estimate of the policy of the regime, if indeed it had one.3?
Despite Cinna’s attempt in 87 to revive Sulpicius’ distribution bill he
seems to have felt no urgency about putting it into practice: the number
of citizens counted at the census of 86 was only 463,000, so the vast mass
of enfranchised Italians cannot have been registered. The censors were
L. Marcius Philippus and M. Perperna. Philippus achieved notoriety by
excluding from the Senate his own uncle, the exiled Ap. Claudius. Other
recorded measures were aimed at easing the economic crisis. In 86 the
consul suffect L. Flaccus introduced a law, inevitably criticized by
conservative sources, remitting three-quarters of existing debts, while
either in this year or the next the praetors, supported by the tribunes,
devised an edict to restore financial stability by reasserting the official
rate of exchange between the denarius and the as, which had been subject
to recent unofficial fluctuation.38 One praetor, Marius Gratidianus, then
anticipated his colleagues and the tribunes by publishing the measure
and claiming the credit for it. His hope was to win sufficient popularity to
bring him to the consulship, but in this he was disappointed, though he

37 Cf. Bennett 1923 (c 24) Gaff. 38 Crawford 1968 (c 45).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CINNANUM TEMPUS 181

did indeed become a popular hero and statues of him were erected
throughout the city.

The young Pompey was also in the news in 86. His home had been
sacked in the capture of Rome in 87 (perhaps a tribute to his father’s
unpopularity) and now he was brought to trial on an embezzlement
charge in respect of items from the booty of Asculum which Strabo had
diverted to his private use. But now that Strabo was dead, his son seemed
worth cultivating, and Pompey was able to mobilize impressive support.
He was defended by the censor L. Philippus, Cinna’s associate Cn. Carbo
and the rising orator Q. Hortensius, while the president of the court, P.
Antistius, betrothed his daughter to the defendant during the proceed-
ings. It is hardly surprising that the blame was shifted on to a freedman
and Pompey triumphantly acquitted.

But the most important problem, for both Cinna and the Senate, was
what to do about Sulla. L. Flaccus had succeeded Marius not only in the
consulship but also in the Mithridatic command. Since Sulla had been
declared a hostis, he could no longer be regarded as the representative of
the Senate and People of Rome. Formally, therefore, Flaccus was being
sent out, not to succeed Sulla, but to take over command of an army
which for some time had had no legitimate commander. For Sulla, of
course, the appointment of Flaccus was a straightforward attempt by his
enemies to deprive him of his command, the validity of which remained
in his eyes unimpaired, and no doubt he was right about the intentions of
Cinna and Carbo. But the terms of reference of Flaccus’ mission, as
recorded by Memnon, show that there were already those at Rome — L.
Valerius Flaccus, consul in 100, appointed princeps senatus by Philippus
and Perperna, was to emerge as the most prominent — who felt that it was
necessary, if not actually desirable, to come to some arrangement with
Sulla. Flaccus had instructions to sound out Sulla in the hope that he
would be prepared to co-operate or, failing that, at least agree to fight
Mithridates first. It must surely follow from this that Flaccus had
authority from the Senate to reinstate Sulla not only as a citizen but also
as proconsul if he proved amenable.

It was unfortunate for Flaccus that he had inherited from Marius not
only his command but his political aide Fimbria, as his quaestor. Fimbria
assassinated him and brought this initiative to an abortive close, and it
was not long before Fimbria himself lost his army to Sulla and was
driven to suicide. However, in the meantime he had succeeded in
blockading Mithridates himself at Pitane, with every hope of capturing
the king had not Lucullus, who was in command of Sulla’s fleet, refused
to lend him any assistance. The ancient sources, saturated though they
are in Sulla’s own apologetics, condemn both Lucullus’ unwillingness to
help Fimbria and Sulla’s peace with Mithridates at Dardanus as betrayals

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

182 6. SULLA

of Roman interests and opportunities, made because Sulla was more
concerned to free his hands for a civil war against his enemies at Rome
than with finishing off the most dangerous enemy of the state. This view
was shared at the time by Sulla’s own troops, despite the lengths to
which he had always gone to secure their favour. Modern scholars have
been inclined to make excuses for Lucullus and Sulla.% It is true that
when the peace of Dardanus was made there was no prospect of an
immediate successful conclusion to the war: Mithridates was still at large
with considerable forces at his disposal, and, as subsequent events were
to show, no Mithridatic war could be regarded as over as long as the king
himself was on the loose. But if Lucullus had co-operated with Fimbria
at Pitane, Mithridates would probably have been a prisoner. It is also
true that Sulla was in no hurry, that he spent eighteen months arranging
the affairs of Asia and Greece and cosseting his health before he invaded
Italy. But that in itself is not enough to absolve him of the charge of
being more concerned with revenge on opponents in Italy than with
Mithridates. Precipitate haste would have been foolish in embarking
upon so momentous an enterprise, and the months of administration in
Asia and Greece were also a time of military, naval and financial
preparation for the war to come.*° The reorganization of the war-torn
provinces was necessary and could hardly be neglected: if it had been,
Sulla would have laid himself even more open to the accusation of
neglecting Rome’s interests in order to pursue a private feud. No doubt
he thought of this, and he may also have reckoned that delay, punctuated
by suitably phrased missives from himself, would help to spread
dissension and despondency among his potential opponents at home.
As his colleague in the consulship of 85 Cinna had chosen Cn. Carbo.
Once Sulla’s actions had put it beyond doubt that he proposed to return
to Italy in arms, the consuls wasted no time in beginning their military
preparations and their propaganda campaign. They set about collecting
money, troops and corn from all over Italy, courted the upper classes in
the Italian towns, on whose attitude much would depend, and canvassed
the support of the new citizens in general, claiming that the threat they
now faced was the consequence of their devotion to the Italian cause.
This had a certain plausibility, despite the fact that Sulpicius’ proposal
had still not been put into practice. For all the upheavals of subsequent
years could be seen as stemming from the original clash in 88 between
Sulpicius and Sulla, which had indeed arisen over the Italian question.
No doubt the consuls also warned the Italians that, if Sulla gained
control, they would certainly have no hope of fair distribution and might
even lose their citizenship as well. That too, given Sulla’s stand in 88,

39 Bennett 1923 (c 24) 52; Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 142ff; contra, Badian 1964 (A 2) 225; 1970(C
13) 19; Bulst 1964 (c 35) 321. 40 Pozzi 1913/14 (C 119) 644ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CINNANUM TEMPUS 183

might well sound convincing. It would therefore be prudent for Sulla to
try to persuade the Italians that they had nothing to fear, that he was not
opposed to their legitimate aspirations, and of this Sulla proved well
aware,

He had already written to the Senate, probably after the death of
Fimbria. The contents of this letter are unknown, but the sending of it of
course implied that Sulla considered himself to be a legitimate procon-
sul, not a public enemy. Probably late in 85 he wrote again. First he
recited his achievements in the Jugurthine and Cimbric Wars, in Cilicia
and in the Social War, in his consulship and most recently against
Mithridates, and stressed that he had harboured the refugees driven out
of Rome by Cinna. Then he complained of the treatment he had received
from his enemies in return for these services, and promised that he would
come to take vengeance on the perpetrators in the name of his murdered
friends, his family and the whole city. But, he went on, he bore no grudge
against the mass of citizens, old or new. The similarity of form and
content between this letter and that written by Caesar at the outset of his
civil war is immediately striking. The inclusion among his achievements
of the acts of his consulship, the Mithridatic War, and his succour of the
refugees implied the validity of those acts and of his standing as
proconsul and the invalidity both of his proclamation as a Aos¢is and of all
the other measures taken against him. (This conviction that his position
as proconsul was unimpaired by the acts of his mortal enemies and
acceptable to the gods who showed their favour by granting him
victories is also vigorously advertised on Sulla’s coinage.)*! The identifi-
cation of his cause with that of the state, already implied by the point
about the refugees, was reinforced by the terms in which he formulated
his threat of vengeance. The final clause was nicely judged to create
dissension between those who had played an active part in opposition to
Sulla and support of Marius and Cinna and those who had merely
acquiesced in what had gone on but might have feared that they would
be judged guilty by association. It also constituted Sulla’s first step
towards undermining the potentially solid support of the new citizens
for Cinna and Carbo in defence of their hard-won privileges.

The immediate response was all Sulla could have hoped for. The
princeps senatus L. Flaccus took the lead in proposing that an embassy be
sent to Sulla to try to reconcile him with his enemies and to encourage
him, if he felt the need of guarantees of his safety, to write again to the
Senate. This proposal clearly represents an effort, not merely to avoid a
renewal of civil war, but, somewhat unrealistically, to assert the
corporate authority of the Senate over any individual, whether Cinna
and Carbo on the one hand or Sulla on the other. For the offer to provide

41 Crawford 1964 (B 146) 148; Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 118f; 1982 (c 90) 15 4ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

184 6. SULLA

guarantees of Sulla’s safety must, to be meaningful, imply that Sulla
should disband his forces on reaching Italy like any other proconsul. It is
unlikely that Cinna and Carbo opposed the motion, for such a course
would have irrevocably branded them as the instigators of conflict. Nor
were they strong enough to run the risk of offending C. Flaccus, brother
of the suffect consul of 86, who was in command of an army in Gaul.
There is thus no need to postpone Flaccus’ proposal until after the
elections and the consuls’ departure from Rome.*?

Asan earnest of good will and a further attempt to establish its control
the Senate instructed Cinna and Carbo to stop their preparations for war
until a reply came from Sulla. The consuls agreed to do so, but in fact at
once arranged their re-election for 84, so as not to have to return again to
Rome for the elections, then went on with their recruiting drive. It was
their intention to meet Sulla in Greece, whether on purely military
grounds or to spare Italy the horrors of renewed civil war and deprive
Sulla of the opportunity to put into practice his protestations of good
will towards the new citizens. So they began to concentrate their forces
at Ancona in order to ship them across to Liburnia. The first contingent
was transported safely, but the second was hit by a storm, which caused
the loss of several ships, and the survivors dispersed to their homes,
saying that they did not want to fight against fellow-citizens. What
followed is not entirely clear. According to Appian the troops still at
Ancona, when they heard the news, refused to embark. Cinna called an
assembly but was met with disobedience, and his efforts to impose
discipline only caused an escalation of violence, which culminated in his
death. Thus the mutiny and the assassination of Cinna arose entirely
from the men’s reluctance to fight and Cinna’s attempt to force them to
do so. Plutarch offers a story with a very different emphasis. He records
that Pompey was in Cinna’s camp, but, in fear of his life because of false
accusations brought against him, secretly withdrew to a place of safety.
His disappearance provoked a rumour that Cinna had had him done
away with, and this inspired the mutiny which ended in Cinna’s death.
That Pompey should have appeared in Cinna’s camp is hardly surprising,
nor perhaps that, seeing which way the wind was blowing, he should
quickly have decided to dissociate himself from Cinna, perhaps after
tampering with the wavering loyalty of the troops. But it is hard to see
why Cinna’s men should be much concerned about Pompey’s fate, and
Plutarch’s account of the outbreak of the mutiny must exaggerate his
importance.43

Both the brevity and the partial nature of Cinna’s ‘domination’ make it
difficult to pass any confident judgement on him as a man or as a
politician. He was aware of the potential of the appeal to an army that had

“2 As Gabba 1958 (B 40) 208. 43 Bennett 1923 (Cc 24) 61; Keaveney 1982 (c 88) 116.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CINNANUM TEMPUS 185

just been demonstrated by Sulla and showed some acuteness in exploit-
ing a popularis line of argument when making his histrionic approach to
the troops at Nola. But there is nothing in the evidence, such as it is, to
suggest that he had any awareness of the political problems that
confronted the Republic or any solutions to offer. His attitude to the
major political issue of the day, the distribution of the new citizens, was
clearly based entirely on self-interest: he took up their cause in order to
gain support and once he was in power became decidedly lukewarm. We
know little of the functioning of Senate, magistrates and courts. The
Senate clearly met and discussed matters of moment. It was prepared to
defy Cinna and Carbo and try to make them comply with its wishes,
though equally Cinna and Carbo ignored the Senate’s instructions when
they felt so inclined. There are few traces of activity, corrupt or
otherwise, in the courts, but, once the initial wave of killings and
expulsions was over, there is equally little sign of extra-legal persecu-
tions. Cinna appears, as far as we can tell, to have given no thought to his
own position in the state, his only apparent aim to hold the consulship
year after year, his only object in holding it the enjoyment of power for
its own sake and for survival. From a purely senatorial point of view the
killings of 87 were worse than anything that had gone before, though
they pale into insignificance when compared with the slaughter that
Sulla was soon to unleash.

After Cinna’s death Carbo abandoned the plan of facing Sulla outside
Italy and brought back the men who had already crossed to Liburnia. He
was reluctant to return to Rome, but was forced to do so by the tribunes,
who threatened to deprive him of his sperium unless he arranged for the
election of a suffect consul. So Carbo visited the city, but the first day
fixed for the election proved ill-omened and on the second lightning
struck the temples of Luna and Ceres. The augurs decreed a further
postponement, and eventually Carbo held office without a colleague till
the end of the year.

Also some time after the death of Cinna envoys came from Sulla
bearing his eagerly awaited reply to the Senate’s overtures. Our sources
differ as to its content and tone. Appian makes Sulla bluntly reject both
the Senate’s suggestions. To the appeal for reconciliation he replied that
he himself could never be friends with those who had committed such
crimes, but that he would not hold it against the state should it choose to
grant them protection. As for the offer of guarantees, he pointed out that
because of the loyalty of his army he had no need of such assurances and
indeed was better placed to offer them not only to the refugees but to the
Senate itself: in other words, he had no intention of disbanding his army.
For himself he demanded the annulment of the Aostis declaration and the
restoration of his property, his priesthood and all his other honours. The

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

186 6. SULLA

Epitome of Livy on the other hand offers a version much more favourable
to Sulla: he promised to obey the Senate, provided only that the citizens
expelled by Cinna who had taken refuge with him were restored, while
nothing is said of any personal demands on his part. The version of
Appian is surely to be preferred. Sulla’s conception of himself as the
equal of the state and his contempt for the Senate’s efforts to cut him
down to size seem wholly in character. The most he was prepared to do
was to give the Senate the chance to repudiate his enemies and choose his
side well in advance of the confrontation he was determined to force.

The Epitomator claims that the Senate was in favour of accepting
Sulla’s terms, but was prevented by Carbo and those who, like him, saw
in war the only chance of their own survival. Appian says that the envoys
returned from Brundisium to Sulla when they learned that Cinna was
dead and that opinion at Rome was hostile to Sulla. This need not mean
that they themselves never went to Rome to deliver their message to the
Senate, a course of action which would clearly have put Sulla in the
wrong. If Appian’s words refer to their reception at Rome, this would be
compatible with a division of opinion in the Senate, though if Appian’s
version of Sulla’s letter is correct, Carbo may have had quite substantial
support.

The coinage of these years has as its principal themes not only peace
and economic recovery but also the unity of Italy and the harmony of
Italy and Rome.*5 But in reality Carbo was already worried about the
loyalty of the Italians. Their patience had been sorely tried by Cinna’s
failure to keep his promise to distribute them through all the tribes and
they might now be tempted by the guarantees offered by Sulla: the
attitude of Cinna’s troops at Ancona had been highly disquieting. So,
after the rejection of Sulla’s embassy, Carbo planned to take hostages
from all the towns of Italy to make sure of their support. But the Senate,
clearly eager to prove to Sulla that it was not committed to Carbo’s
cause, opposed this step, though Carbo seems to have tried to go ahead
with the scheme regardless.*6 The Senate did pass a decree which at last
provided for the distribution of the new citizens throughout the thirty-
five tribes. Whether this was done at Carbo’s instigation or to steal his
thunder is unfortunately unclear. However, it was almost certainly
Carbo who somewhat later proposed a second decree extending the same
privilege to freedmen, as Sulpicius had originally intended. The Senate
also voted that all armies should be disbanded. Carbo may well have
supported this decree, which might serve to put Sulla in the wrong by
branding him as the aggressor, but many of those who voted in favour

44 Cf. Pozzi 1913/14 (c 119) 651; Ensslin 1926 (B 33) 446; Frier 1971 (c 53) 593f.
4 Rowland 1966 (B 236); Crawford 1964 (B 146) 148. 4 Cf. Val. Max. vi.2.10.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 187

may still have cherished the futile hope that the Senate could even now
assert its authority over the rival generals without a resort to force.

III, THE CIVIL WAR, 83-81 B.C.

In the spring of 83 Sulla crossed to Brundisium with an army that
consisted in essence of the five legions with which he had fought the
Mithridatic War, a force much smaller than that which his opponents
could hope to muster, but experienced, used to working together and
totally devoted to their general. Not surprisingly Brundisium welcomed
the invaders and was rewarded in due course by exemption from
customs duties. Once Sulla had committed himself, support began to
arrive. M. Crassus is said to have joined him even before he crossed to
Italy. When he heard the news of Cinna’s death, Crassus had raised an
army in Spain and made his way to Africa to link up with Metellus Pius,
though the two men soon quarrelled. Pius had tried to secure control of
Africa, but had been driven out by the governor, C. Fabius Hadrianus.
He may then have taken refuge in Liguria before bringing his forces to
Sulla soon after his landing. He still considered himself a proconsul and
was acknowledged as such by Sulla: his accession brought Sulla
considerable prestige. More dramatic was the arrival of Pompey. After
Cinna’s death he had remained on his estates in Picenum, but now he
raised a legion from among his clients and set out to join Sulla. It is
impossible to determine exactly when and where they met, but Sulla
treated the young man with exceptional respect, laying on a guard of
honour, rising to greet him and addressing him as imperator. Pompey was
then sent back to Picenum to use his influence in the region in a further
recruiting drive, while Crassus was sent to raise troops among the Marsi.
Nor was it only exiles and other sympathizers who came to Sulla.
Renegade supporters of Cinna and Carbo were to form an increasingly
prominent element in his following.*” The first to be mentioned is one of
the most remarkable: P. Cornelius Cethegus, one of the twelve hostes of
88, who now threw himself on Sulla’s mercy and offered his consider-
able, if dubious, talents to the cause. He was welcomed, as somewhat
later was C. Verres, who had been Carbo’s quaestor in 84 and was still
serving under him, but went over to Sulla, bringing with him Carbo’s
military chest.

Feeling in Rome and Italy was predominantly hostile to Sulla. The
memory of his march on Rome in 88 and his reputation as an implacable
hater reinforced disapproval with fear. So, when the consuls L. Corne-
lius Scipio and C. Norbanus (representatives of the nobility on the one

47 Keaveney 1984 (C 93) 142f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

188 6. SULLA

*Lavinium

Satricum.

Antium
*

Land over 200 metres

9 10 km

0 g 10 miles

7 Latium

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 189

hand, Italy on the other), strengthened by the passing of the senatus
consultum ultimum, sent men all over Italy to collect troops, supplies and
money, they received considerable support. It was clear that the first
major theatre of war would be Campania, which may help to explain the
proposal ofa tribune, M. Iunius Brutus, to establish a colony at Capua.48

After the battle of Chaeronea the oracle of Trophonius at Lebadea had
prophesied that Sulla would rout his enemies when he returned to Italy
and, despite an unfavourable omen at Dyrrachium, he now received
further signs of divine favour. The seer Postumius descried a promise of
victory in a sacrifice made by Sulla at Tarentum, while on his march a
slave, inspired by Ma-Bellona, also foretold his success, with a warning
that, if he did not hurry, the Capitol would be destroyed by fire, as indeed
it was on 6 July. At first Sulla was able to advance quickly. His generosity
to his troops in Asia had been such that he was able not only to declare
but to enforce a ban on looting. From Brundisium he followed the Via
Appia, probably as far as Caudium. There he made a detour by way of
Saticula and Calatia before heading for his first objective, Capua. Only
now did he encounter opposition. The consuls had taken the dangerous
step of dividing their forces to block his possible lines of advance, and
Sulla found Norbanus stationed near Casilinum to defend the crossing of
the Volturnus and the junction of the Viae Appia and Latina. Before
resorting to battle Sulla tried negotiations, but his envoys were mis-
treated by Norbanus. No doubt Sulla’s principal motives were to
strengthen his image as a man of peace who had been driven to war by
the intransigence of his enemies and, as always in his diplomatic
manoeuvres, to undermine their precarious solidarity and spread dissen-
sion in their ranks. But if his offer had been accepted he would surely
have been pleased. He might then have been able to gain control of
Rome without having to fight for it, and it need not be supposed that he
would have allowed himself to be cheated of his revenge on that account,
even though he would have had to devise a somewhat different pretext.
The armies clashed near the foot of Mount Tifata. Norbanus suffered
heavy losses and was forced to withdraw to Capua.

Rather than waste time on a blockade, Sulla continued up the Via
Latina towards Teanum Sidicinum, where the other consul Scipio was
established. Morale in Scipio’s army was already low and Sulla tried to
undermine it further by again sending envoys to negotiate in the hope
that battle would prove unnecessary. Unlike Norbanus, Scipio was
prepared to listen. He may well have believed, however optimistically,
that real advantages might accrue from a negotiated peace. Thousands of
citizen lives would be saved, and although any agreement would leave
Sulla master of Rome, he would have less excuse to indulge in violence

48 Gabba 1973 (c 55) 15 1ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

190 6. SULLA

than if he came to the city as the victor in a long and bitter war, especially
as he would find there more men who might try to restrain him than if his
leading opponents were all already dead or in exile. So Scipio and Sulla
met between Cales and Teanum and actually came to an agreement. Its
contents are known only from Cicero’s vague description in the Twelfth
Philippic, which makes it clear at least that they were very wide-ranging:
they covered the authority of the Senate, the votes of the people and the
right of citizenship. That Sulla took it on himself to lay down the law on
such matters demonstrates yet again his opinion of his own importance.
It is likely that he agreed to stand by his recent acquiescence in the
distribution of the Italians throughout all the tribes on condition that the
measures he had passed in 88 to restore the predominance of the Senate
and reform voting in the popular assemblies were acknowledged as
valid. Scipio then sent a message to Norbanus at Capua to try to secure
his assent. Unfortunately, from his point of view, he chose as his envoy
Sertorius, who did not trust Sulla, had been against negotiating in the
first place, and thought that there was greater hope of safety in carrying
on the war. So on his way to Capua he turned aside and broke the truce
arranged by Sulla and Scipio by seizing the town of Suessa, which had
already gone over to Sulla. Sulla at once protested, and Scipio, despite
his innocence, had no choice but to declare their agreement at an end and
return Sulla’s hostages.

For Sulla the collapse of the negotiations brought both diplomatic and
practical advantages. His claim to be the champion of peace received a
considerable boost and he could now maintain that his opponents had
placed themselves wholly in the wrong. Indeed, he even used their
continued resistance from this moment on as a formal justification for
the blood-bath that followed the fighting. Moreover, Scipio’s already
unenthusiastic army had welcomed the prospect of peace and placed the
blame on the consul when it receded. They made it clear that if Sulla
approached their camp they would not resist but come over. So Sulla
made as if to attack, but instead sent in his troops with orders to
fraternize. This move was completely successful, and by the time Sulla
himself entered the camp he found only the unfortunate Scipio and his
son still there. He tried to persuade them too to change sides, but when
they refused let them go. Sulla tried to repeat his trick by sending a
second embassy to Norbanus, who was still at Capua, but the consul
made no reply, so Sulla continued his advance, while Norbanus, it seems,
abandoned Capua and retreated to Praeneste.

Meanwhile Carbo had based himself at Ariminum, the key to
Cisalpine Gaul. He had already suffered a defeat in a cavalry engagement
against Pompey in Picenum, where Pompey’s attempts at recruiting had
been much more successful than those of Carbo’s emissaries: he had

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR Ig!

raised a further two legions. It was probably now, rather than when he
first joined Sulla, that three enemy commanders attacked Pompey as he
made his way back to Sulla: C. Carrinas, L. Iunius Brutus Damasippus,
whom he routed, and a third whose identity is uncertain, perhaps C.
Coelius Antipater.49 Pompey also encountered the consul Scipio, who
had acquired another army, but who now suffered the humiliation of
seeing his troops desert for a second time. Later in the year Carbo visited
Rome to hold the consular elections. While he was there he caused
Metellus Pius and all other senators who were with Sulla to be declared
hostes. The consuls elected were drawn from the hard core of the
resistance to Sulla, the political heirs of Marius and Cinna, between
whom and Sulla there was such a degree of mutual hatred that they had
no choice but to fight to the last. Carbo himself was consul for the third
time, and to try to exploit the magic of a name he took as his colleague C.
Marius, son of the great man, who was only twenty-six.

Both sides devoted the remainder of 83 to recruiting and other
preparations for the crucial campaign of 82. After his escapade at Suessa,
Sertorius had raised a considerable force in the old Marian stronghold of
Etruria, but he made himself unpopular at Rome by his criticisms of the
inertia and incompetence that had marked the resistance to: Sulla so far.
He also disapproved of the choice of Marius as consul, perhaps because
he had been hoping to be Carbo’s colleague himself. So at the end of the
year he left Italy to try to assume control of his praetorian province,
Hispania Citerior. Sulla followed up his earlier assurances to the Italians
by making a series of formal agreements with Italic peoples, in which he
guaranteed that he would not deprive them of their citizenship nor
interfere with their distribution throughout the tribes. It is probable,
however, that no treaty was made with the Samnites, not because Sulla
nursed an atavistic racial hatred or because he cherished any devious
scheme to disguise a civil war fought to satisfy a private grudge as a
struggle for national survival against Rome’s oldest enemy, but because
he denied the validity of the terms made by Marius and Cinna in 87 and so
did not recognize the Samnites as Roman citizens.5

Bad weather had prevented any fighting in Italy over the winter, but
the year began badly for Sulla’s opponents in other theatres of war. The
governor of Africa, Fabius Hadrianus, perished in a rising at Utica and
the praetor Q. Antonius Balbus lost Sardinia and his life to L. Philippus,
who had thrown in his lot with Sulla. When the campaign in Italy began
in the spring, Sulla divided his forces. He himself continued his march
towards Rome and Etruria, while Metellus headed north to tie Carbo
down at Ariminum and try to gain control of Cisalpine Gaul. He enjoyed

49 Tuplin 1979 (c 145); contra, Keaveney 1982 (c 88) 118f.
50 Pozzi 1913/14 (c 119) 668, better than Salmon 1964 (c 128) 74ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

192 6. SULLA

an immediate success, defeating the praetor C. Carrinas in a battle on the
Aesis. Carrinas suffered heavy casualties and withdrew, probably to
Spoletium, while the whole region went over to Pius. Carbo now
advanced in person against Metellus and contrived to surround him, but
news soon came of a major defeat inflicted by Sulla on Marius, and so
Carbo judged it prudent to return to Ariminum. On the way his
rearguard suffered at the hands of Pompey, whom Sulla had sent to help
Metellus.

Sulla had proceeded along the Via Latina and made contact with the
consul Marius near Signia. The decisive battle took place at Sacriportus
(the exact site is unknown, but it probably lay close to the junction of the
Viae Latina and Labicana). Encouraged by yet another favourable
dream, Sulla himself was at first eager to fight, but his men were
exhausted, it was raining hard, and his officers at last persuaded him to
make camp. Marius seized the opportunity to attack, but first his left
wing began to give ground and then a substantial part of his force
deserted. The remainder fled to Praeneste, with Sulla’s men hot on their
heels. Only the first arrivals got in safely before the gates were closed.
Marius himself had to be hauled up ona rope. Sulla took many prisoners
and put all the Samnites among them to death. According to Appian he
announced as his reason that the Samnites had always been enemies of
Rome. Whatever his exact words, the underlying implication must have
been that Sulla did not acknowledge the Samnites as citizens. If he
rejected, as he surely must have done, the validity of their agreement
with Marius and Cinna, then logically they must have been for him still
belligerents in the Social War — which may be what he actually said. This
vindictive act was to have drastic consequences, for it provoked a
massive rising in Sulla’s rear which came close to depriving him of
ultimate victory.

Sulla left another renegade, Q. Lucretius Afella, to besiege Praeneste,
from which Marius sent a message to Rome instructing the urban
praetor Brutus Damasippus to put to death any leading men whom he
suspected of sympathy for Sulla. Damasippus summoned a meeting of
the Senate, at which four men lost their lives. Pompey’s father-in-law P.
Antistius and C. Papirius Carbo Arvina were killed in the building, L.
Domitius Ahenobarbus, consul in 94, and Q. Scaevola the pontifex
maximus, the most distinguished of the victims, as they were trying to
escape. The bodies were thrown into the Tiber.*! Sulla sent detachments
down all the roads to Rome — the Latina, Labicana and Praenestina — and
it became clear that Damasippus’ murders had done nothing to streng-
then resistance, for the city at once opened its gates rather than face a

51 After Sacriportus: Pozzi 1913/14 (C 119) 669; Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 138f; contra, Hack] 1982 (c
Ji) 251.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 193

blockade. When Sulla himself arrived on the Campus Martius he found
that all his opponents had fled. They were promptly declared hostes and
their property was confiscated. Sulla probably did not enter the city —
though the Senate would surely have granted him a dispensation — but
summoned an assembly, to which he apologized for the present
disturbances and promised that they would soon be brought to an end
and the affairs of Rome put in order. Leaving a garrison of veterans
behind, he set off without further delay to meet Carbo in Etruria.

Things had continued to go well for Sulla elsewhere.5? Carbo had
suffered a second defeat at the hands of Metellus, while Pompey had
beaten Marcius Censorinus near Sena Gallica. But when news came of
the siege of Praeneste Carbo’s first priority inevitably became the relief of
his colleague. With considerable skill he succeeded in withdrawing his
forces from further confrontation with Metellus and established his base
at Clusium. Norbanus was left at Ariminum to try to hold down
Metellus. But Pius was able to ship his army to Ravenna and occupied the
surrounding plain before making for Faventia, while Pompey now
moved to rejoin Sulla. Meanwhile in the south Neapolis was betrayed to
Sulla.

Sulla himself advanced along the Via Cassia towards Clusium, while
another detachment took the Via Clodia to Saturnia. Both were
successful: Sulla’s cavalry defeated Carbo’s on the Clanis, while the other
force won a battle at Saturnia. A.protracted clash between Sulla and
Carbo before Clusium ended indecisively, but elsewhere his generals
enjoyed consistent good fortune. Pompey and Crassus, who had
occupied Tuder early in the year, defeated Carrinas near Spoletium and
shut him up in the town. However, Carbo sent a force to relieve him and
though Sulla inflicted some damage on it in an ambush it achieved its
objective. But more important was the failure of a force of eight legions
commanded by Censorinus, which Carbo sent to raise the siege of
Praeneste. Pompey ambushed it in a defile and penned the survivors ona
hill. Censorinus himself escaped and made his way back to Carbo, but his
army blamed him for falling into Pompey’s trap: the majority of the men
dispersed to their homes, while one legion made its own way back to
Ariminum.

But at this point help came for Praeneste from an unexpected quarter.
Sulla’s treatment of his Samnite prisoners after Sacriportus had pro-
voked a rising of the Samnites, who were joined by the Lucanians, anda
combined Samnite and Lucanian force, led by the Samnite C. Pontius
Telesinus, the Lucanian M. Lamponius and the Capuan Gutta, set out
for Praeneste. Sulla was in no doubt about the urgency of this threat. He
at once left Carbo to his own devices at Clusium and hurried to protect

52 Pozzi 1913/14 (c 119) 670ff; Keavency 1982 (c 88) 121ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

194 6. SULLA

Afella. It is impossible to determine from Appian’s vague description
exactly where or how Sulla disposed his forces, but he prevented the
Italian army from making its way past Afella’s position and effecting a
junction with Carbo’s forces to the north.53 In alarm Marius made an
attempt to break out, but this too failed.

In the north things went from bad to worse. Metellus had encamped at
Faventia, where he was rashly attacked by Norbanus late in the day on
extremely unsuitable ground. Norbanus was heavily defeated, and there
followed the now familiar pattern of desertions and dispersals. Among
those who went over to Metellus was a legion of Lucanians commanded
by P. Albinovanus, another of the twelve ostes of 88. Albinovanus came
to an arrangement with Pius to betray his fellow-commanders in
exchange for an amnesty. He invited Norbanus and others to a banquet,
at which all the guests were murdered. Norbanus had prudently stayed
away and made his escape to Rhodes, where he later committed suicide
when tracked down by Sulla’s bounty-hunters. Albinovanus then
surrendered Ariminum and the whole of Cisalpine Gaul went over to
Pius, while M. Lucullus, who had been besieged by one Quinctius at
Fidentia, made a successful sortie and defeated his opponent.

Carbo sent a second force, this time of only two legions under
Damasippus, to relieve Praeneste, but again Sulla blocked its path and it
too could find no way past. At this and the collapse of resistance in the
north Carbo seems suddenly to have lost his nerve. He abandoned his
army at Clusium, intending to withdraw to Africa. A serious defeat at the
hands of Pompey produced further dispersals, but Carrinas, Censorinus
and Damasippus made a last effort to relieve Praeneste from the north, in
conjunction with the Samnites who were trying once more to break
through from the south. This attempt too failed, and so it was decided to
try a diversion by marching on Rome itself, which now lay almost empty
of both men and supplies, in the hope of drawing Sulla out of his
impregnable position. By the early morning of 1 November the Italian
force had reached a point just over a Roman mile from the Colline Gate.
But although Telesinus may have made a speech urging his men to
destroy the wolf in its lair, he made no attempt to take the city. No doubt,
whatever his ultimate intentions may have been, he realized that it would
be not only pointless but dangerous to allow his men to be distracted by
the delights of sacking Rome while Sulla was still in the field. So the
Samnites and their allies waited for Sulla to appear.

Sulla had sent a squadron of cavalry ahead while he himself hurried in
full force down the Via Praenestina. About noon he encamped near the
temple of Venus Erycina. The battle began in late afternoon, against the
advice of some of Sulla’s officers, who thought that the men were too

53 Lewis 1971 (C 98). 54 Gabba 1958 (B 40) 244f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 195

tired. The right wing, commanded by Crassus, won an easy victory, but
the left, under Sulla’s own command, broke. Sulla risked his life in trying
to rally his forces but they fled, despite his despairing prayers to Apollo,
towards the city. Sulla was forced to take refuge in his camp, and some of
his men rode for Praeneste to tell Afella to abandon the siege, though
Afella refused to panic. But when Sulla’s fleeing troops reached the gates
of Rome the veterans dropped the portcullis, compelling them to stand
and fight. The battle continued well into the night, as slowly but surely
Sulla’s men gained the upper hand, until finally they captured the
Samnite camp. Telesinus himself was found among the dead, but
Lamponius, Censorinus and Carrinas escaped. Later still messengers
came from Crassus, who had pursued the enemy as far as Antemnae, and
Sulla learned for the first time of his success.55 Censorinus and Carrinas
were soon captured and killed, and their heads were sent by Sulla to
Afella at Praeneste, along with those of Telesinus, Damasippus, who had
also fallen in the battle, and Marius Gratidianus, who was tortured and
killed by L. Catilina at the tomb of Catulus, whom he had prosecuted
after Cinna’s capture of Rome. To all intents and purposes the civil war
in Italy was over, though Praeneste had not yet fallen and a few other
towns still held out — Norba fell early in 81, but Nola not until 80,
Aesernia and Volaterrae only in 79 — and Sulla’s enemies still held Sicily,
Africa and Spain.%

When he learned of Crassus’ success, Sulla went at once to Antemnae.
There 3,000 of the survivors offered to surrender, and Sulla promised
them safe-conduct if they killed those in the town who still favoured
resistance. They did so, but when they emerged they were brought to
Rome and penned in the Villa Publica along with the prisoners taken at
the Colline Gate. There all were massacred by Sulla’s troops, within
earshot of the Senate, which Sulla had summoned in the temple of
Bellona nearby to receive his report on the Mithridatic War. After his
speech in the Senate Sulla addressed the people. He promised that things
would change for the better if men obeyed him, but also made it clear
that he would take revenge on any man of the rank of military tribune or
above who had aided his enemies in any way since the day that L. Scipio
had broken the truce.

Then Sulla set out for Praeneste. There Afella’s display of the heads
taken at the Colline Gate had proved that further resistance was useless,
and the city surrendered. Confusion reigns in the sources as to the fate of
Marius: either he was captured and killed while trying to escape, or he
committed suicide, whether alone or in a pact with Telesinus’ younger
brother. His head was sent by Afella to Sulla. Some prisoners of
senatorial rank were put to death at once by Afella, but the bulk of the

55 Keaveney 1982 (C 87) 144ff. 56 Aesernia: Keaveney—Strachan 1981 (B 52).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

196 6. SULLA

men taken was reserved to await the judgement of Sulla. His solution
was to divide the prisoners into three groups: Romans, Praenestines and
Samnites. The Romans were pardoned, the Samnites slaughtered, the
Praenestines, apart from a few that Sulla felt had served his cause, met the
same fate.*”

To recover the vital corn-producing provinces of Sicily and Africa
Sulla chose Pompey. The young man had already received one reward: a
marriage alliance with Sulla.5* The bride was Sulla’s stepdaughter
Aemilia, daughter of M. Scaurus. She was already married to M’. Acilius
Glabrio and pregnant, but Glabrio was persuaded to divorce her while
Pompey divorced the luckless Antistia. Yet the scheme came to nothing,
for Aemilia shortly died in labour. Pompey’s position was for the first
time placed on a legal footing: he was granted praetorian imperium by the
Senate. After his initial flight to Africa Carbo had decided to join forces
with the governor of Sicily, M. Perperna. He established himself on the
island of Cossyra and sent M. Brutus, praetor in 88, on a reconnaissance
to Lilybaeum. Brutus, however, was surrounded by Pompey’s fleet and
committed suicide. Carbo himself then tried to land in Sicily, but found
that Perperna had already left the island. He tried to escape to Egypt, but
was captured at Cossyra and brought to Pompey, who had him put to
death. The description of Carbo as still consul at the time of his death,
whether legally accurate or not, places it before the end of 82. Pompey
was later accused of ingratitude, since Carbo had defended him in 86, but
Carbo’s name had figured on the first proscription list, so although the
proscriptions had not yet been legalized Pompey had little choice. Their
previous connexion would merely have made it more essential for
Pompey to give this proof of loyalty to Sulla. With his legate and
brother-in-law C. Memmius, Pompey then devoted himself to the
reorganization of the island and seized the opportunity to form numer-
ous clientelae, his most noteworthy protégé being Sthenius of Himera.

In Sicily Pompey received a letter from Sulla to inform him that a
further decree of the Senate had empowered him to proceed to Africa,
where another refugee, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, had secured the
support of Hiarbas of Numidia. Leaving Memmius in charge of Sicily,
Pompey invaded Africa and according to Plutarch took only forty days
to capture Domitius and his camp, put Hiarbas to death and replace him
with the more reliable Hiempsal, achievements for which he was saluted
as imperator. Domitius too was executed: again his proscription provided
the justification, but again there were repercussions later. In Sulla’s eyes
Pompey had now served his purpose. He wrote again, ordering Pompey
to disband his army except for one legion, with which he should wait till

57 Keaveney 1982 (Cc 87) 149.
58 Plut. Pomp. 9.1ff; Sulla 33.3; though cf. Keaveney 1982 (c 88) 132.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP 197

his successor arrived. But Pompey wanted a triumph, and although he
was in no position to offer a serious military challenge to Sulla, he
calculated that he could afford to risk being awkward. His troops, no
doubt suitably primed, refused to go home unless Pompey came with
them, and so he brought them back to Italy in person. Once he realized
that Pompey was not in revolt, Sulla stifled his resentment and even
made a point of addressing him as Magnus, a name just given him by his
troops in Africa. But now Pompey demanded his triumph. Sulla, angry
at his presumption, refused on a technicality: Pompey was not yet a
senator. Pompey persisted, impudently warning Sulla that more men
worshipped the rising than the setting sun. Sulla gave way, and on 12
March 81 Pompey achieved the first great landmark of his extraordinary
career: a triumph at the age of twenty-four while he was still an egues.5°

IV. SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP AND ITS AFTERMATH, 82-78 B.C.

Sulla’s treatment of his prisoners, savage though it was, was at least
governed by rational considerations of a kind. But from the moment of
his capture of Rome his supporters had run riot not only in the city but all
over Italy, killing for profit, pleasure or personal vengeance anyone they
pleased. Indeed the proscriptions, Sulla’s most notorious legacy to
Rome, were instituted as a response to protests against the arbitrary
nature of these killings, though the details of the exchanges between
Sulla and his critics remain uncertain. Even so loyal and distinguished an
adherent of Sulla as Q. Catulus is said to have enquired whether anyone
was to be left alive, but the first list was issued by Sulla after a plea that, if
he would not reveal whom he proposed to spare, he would at least make
known whom he had decided to punish, though it is not clear whether
this request was made.in spontaneous anger by a young and not easily
identified C. Metellus or in prearrangement with Sulla by one Fursidius
or Fufidius.

Those named on the lists were condemned to death without trial, their
property was confiscated, and their descendants were barred from
standing for office for two generations, though they were still liable to
the duties of their station. Rewards were promised to those who killed
the proscribed or gave information which led to their capture, penalties
imposed on anyone who concealed or otherwise helped them. The first
list was published before the fall of Praeneste, perhaps on the day after
that meeting of the Senate which had been shocked by the slaughter of
the prisoners. Its length is a matter of dispute: Appian speaks of 4o
senators and some 1,600 equites, though the latter figure may represent
the eventual total, while Plutarch and Orosius agree that the first list

59 Badian 1955 (c 5); Seager 1979 (c 258) 12 n. 46; contra, Twyman 1979 (c 148).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

198 6. SULLA

contained 80 names. It was swiftly followed by two more, each
containing some 220 names according to Plutarch. At first there was no
indication of how long the lists would remain open; only later did Sulla
announce that no names would be added after 1 June 81. Two consuls
and two consulars were named on the first list: Carbo, Marius, Norbanus
and L. Scipio, who had taken refuge at Massilia; so too was Sertorius. It
seems that Scipio was deprived of his augurate and the vacant position in
the college filled by Sulla himself. Also proscribed, though somewhat
later, was the young Julius Caesar, who refused to divorce Cinna’s
daughter when ordered to do so by Sulla. In consequence he lost his
position as flamen Dialis designate, but was eventually pardoned by Sulla
on the intercession of Mam. Lepidus, C. Cotta and the Vestal Virgins.
Nor was the witch hunt confined to Rome. Agents both Roman and
Italian visited every region, and in the towns of Italy just as in Rome
itself the proscriptions were exploited by unscrupulous men to gain
wealth and get rid of their political adversaries. Crassus is said to have
earned Sulla’s lasting displeasure by proscribing a man in Bruttium
solely in order to secure his estate, while the activities of Oppianicus at
Larinum and the Roscii at Ameria (of which later speeches by Cicero
inform us) are no doubt typical of what went on all over the country.

If Sulla seriously intended the institution of the proscriptions to
clarify and stabilize a totally confused situation, he failed completely, but
it is hard to believe that he cared. The published lists were frequently
tampered with, while in the carrying out of executions and the claiming
of rewards, cases of mistaken and falsified identity were not uncommon.
The criteria of guilt were never properly applied. Despite his disappro-
val of some who enriched themselves, Sulla himself seems to have been
easily persuaded by his satellites to add names to the lists to satisfy
personal grudges or greed for rich men’s property and auctioned off
confiscated goods to his favourites at prices well below the market value.
Many such abuses must also have taken place without his knowledge;
Cicero’s insistence that Sulla had no part in his freedman Chrysogonus’
machinations against Roscius is probably true. It was in any case
inevitable that the rich should be the principal victims. Sulla was not
concerned with pursuing the rank and file who had fought against him
but only those who, thanks to their wealth or social standing, had played
a more conspicuous part in the resistance, that is members of the
senatorial and equestrian orders. However, the fact that the number of
equites proscribed was twenty times greater than the total of senators was
not a consequence of any special hatred of the order on Sulla’s part, but a
simple reflection of the relative numbers of senators and equites involved
in the conflict.

60 Badian 1968 (c 11) 38.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP 199

Even the dead had not escaped Sulla’s vengeance: he had ordered the
remains of the great Marius to be disinterred and scattered. But with his
thirst for revenge eased if not yet slaked he took thought for his own
position in the state. In November 82 the Senate decreed that all his acts,
both as consul and proconsul, should be ratified. It also voted him a gilt
equestrian statue, to be set before the rostra, the first time such an honour
had been vouchsafed to a Roman citizen. The inscription read, according
to Appian, ‘Cornelio Sullae Imperatori Felici’; however, it may be that
the last two words should be reversed. If so, this sug gests that this decree
of the Senate was the same that conferred on him officially the agnomen
Felix, the formal assumption of which should probably be placed after
the fall of Praeneste rather than after his triumph.®! His adoption of the
Greek surname Epaphroditos, which he had used during the Mithridatic
War and after, was also perhaps approved at this time.

Sulla knew perfectly well what he wanted, the obsolete office of the
dictatorship; but he proposed to make use of it in an unprecedented way
which, by accident or design, had more in common with the functions of
the Xviri, who were believed to have drawn up the Twelve Tables (Vol.
vil2, pp. 113ff), than with those of any previous dictator.6 First he
instructed the Senate to appoint an énterrex, for both consuls had been
proscribed and both were now dead The Senate’s choice fell on its
princeps, L. Flaccus, though it is hard to believe that many were so
sanguine as to hope, as Appian suggests, that he would arrange for
consular elections to be held. Next Sulla wrote putting his own views to
Flaccus: he thought that in the present situation the appointment of a
dictator would be beneficial, not for the traditional brief fixed period but
until stable government had been restored throughout the empire, and
that he himself would be an eminently suitable candidate. So Flaccus
promulgated a law. By its terms Sulla was to be made dictator
indefinitely to put the state in order and draft laws. Any measure he
might take was ratified in advance; whether or not he submitted his
proposals to the people for formal validation was entirely up to him. In
particular he was to have the right to condemn citizens to death without
trial. The people had no choice and the law was duly passed. Flaccus
nominated Sulla as dictator, and Sulla in turn named Flaccus as his
magister equitum.® It perhaps needs to be emphasized that Sulla was not
appointed dictator for life. The definition of his mission, broad though it
was, constituted in itself a kind of time-limit, albeit an inevitably vague
one. It was taken for granted that when Sulla had completed that mission
according to his lights he would lay down his dictatorship, and there is

61 Balsdon 1951 (c 18) 4f; Gabba 1958 (B 40) 263; contra, Keaveney 1983 (4 68) 45 n. 6.
82 Bellen 1975 (c 23) s60ff; Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 162.
6 Cic. Att, x.15.2; Gabba 1958 (B 40) 341f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

200 6. SULLA

nothing but the anachronistic surprise of later sources to suggest that
Sulla himself considered for a moment the possibility of trying to retain
his power for life. A minor puzzle concerns the number of his lictors. It is
said that he had twenty-four and that this was unprecedented. The figure
need not be doubted, but the comment may well be incorrect.%

Sulla promptly held elections for the consulships of 81. M. Tullius
Decula and Cn. Cornelius Dolabella were elected. It is unfortunately
unclear whether it was at these elections that Q. Lucretius A fella tried to
stand, although he had held no previous public office, basing his claim on
his services to Sulla at Praeneste. It is perhaps more likely that Afella
stood now, while his success at Praeneste was still fresh in men’s minds
and before Sulla’s law on observance of the regular carsus had been
passed, than that he tried in deliberate defiance of Sulla’s rules to stand
against the formidable combination of Sulla himself and Metellus Pius
for the consulship of 80.65 But even now Sulla would not allow such
irregularity. He warned Afella to withdraw, but when he persisted had
him killed and made it clear to the people that no protests would be
tolerated. Then on 27 and 28 January 81 Sulla celebrated his triumph
over Mithridates. On the second day the treasures taken by Marius from
Rome to Praeneste were exhibited, while the restored exiles marched in
the procession, saluting Sulla as their saviour and father. The implication
is clear: those Romans who had fought against Sulla were traitors who
had by so doing given aid to the national enemy Mithridates. In view of
Sulla’s own dealings with Mithridates the irony could hardly be bettered.

But even before this Sulla may have begun on the great work of
reform. His first law was probably that which, retrospectively and till 1
June, authorized the proscriptions. Ona more constructive level his aim,
broadly speaking, was to restore the predominance of the Senate, which
since 133 had been subjected to intermittent challenge and gradual
erosion. But to do this he had to reconstruct the Senate itself, which had
been depleted to about half its normal strength of 300 first by the Social
and civil wars, then by Sulla’s own proscriptions. Sulla began by
bringing the numbers up to 300, probably using the traditional criterion
of distinguished service in war, which might explain the hostile tradition
that he put common soldiers in the Senate, then he enrolled some 300
further members. (It is possible that each tribe was allowed to nominate
eight or nine.) These came from the equestrian order; the obvious and
only other qualification will have been loyalty to Sulla. It has been
claimed that Sulla was hostile to the eguztes and wanted to leave the order
weak and leaderless by creaming off its best men into the Senate. There is

Livy Per. xxxix; Marino 1973-4 (c 104) 420f; Keaveney 1983 (c 92) 193 n. 58.

65 Contra, Gabba 1958 (B 40) 276f; Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 198f.
6 Gabba 1958 (B 40) 343ff 1973 (C 55) 1598, 4ooff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP 201

no warrant for this. The structure of Roman society was simply such that
the equestrian order was the only conceivable source of new senators on
such a large scale. To keep the Senate up to strength in future Sulla
increased the number of quaestors elected each year from eight to twenty
and enacted that they should automatically enter the Senate at the end of
their year of office instead of waiting for enrolment at the next census.
There is, however, no evidence that Sulla was hostile to the censorship as
an institution, wanted to abolish it, or sought to weaken it by this
measure.

Sulla also acted to suppress those forces which had undermined the
authority of the Senate over the previous fifty years. Outstanding among
these had been the tribunate, and Sulla set out to render it politically
harmless. The tribunes were deprived of the power to introduce
legislation.*” The right of veto remained, without restriction, if Caesar is
to be believed, as he probably should be.® To ensure that the tribunate
became, as Velleius puts it, a shadow without substance, Sulla also
enacted that any man who held it should be debarred from tenure of any
further public office. Thus, he hoped, men of talent and ambition would
shun the tribunate, so that any future agitation for the restoration of its
powers would prove ineffective. He also wished to establish the Senate’s
control over other magistrates, indeed over all individuals. To this end
he revived the /ex annalis, enforcing the proper order of the cursus —
quaestorship, praetorship, consulship ~ and laying down minimum ages
for election to each office: probably twenty-nine for the quaestorship,
thirty-nine for the praetorship and forty-two for the consulship.® To
prevent such inordinate accumulations of power and awctoritas as had
recently been achieved, most dramatically by Marius but also to a lesser
extent by Cinna and Carbo, Sulla resurrected another old rule, which
required an interval of ten years before the iteration of any office.

But it was clear that in the future the greatest threat to senatorial
control must come from a contumacious proconsul backed by an army,
like Sulla’s more loyal to its commander than to the state. Sulla
understood the problem and did his best. He certainly did not lay down
that consuls or praetors must remain in Rome until the end of their year
of office.” Nor is it likely that the increase in the number of praetorships
to eight was intended to make it possible to replace all provincial
governors at the end of each year. There might quite often be cogent
military or administrative grounds for prorogation, but even when no
such grounds existed governors often remained in their provinces for

67 Keaveney 1982 (c 87) 186 n. 3; contra, Gabba 1958 (B 40) 273f.
68 Caes. BCiv. 1.5.1; 7.3; see Lintott 1978 (B 190) 127.

69 Fraccaro 1956~7 (A 33) 11 225ff; Gabba 1958 (B 40) 342f.

7 Balsdon 1939 (c 167) 58f; Giovannini 1983 (F 62) 75ff, 91ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

202 6. SULLA

two years or longer. In any case such a system could work only if every
magistrate were compelled by law to take a province at the end of his year
of office, but in fact there was no compulsion, nor even indeed any
pressure. What Sulla did do, through the medium of his law of maiestas,
was to limit strictly the action which a governor could take without
authority from the Senate or People. He could not on his own initiative
leave his province, lead his army outside it, enter a foreign kingdom or
make war, and he must leave his province within thirty days of his
successor’s arrival. Of these provisions only the last was perhaps new,
and it is clear that they were meant to be interpreted in the light of
common sense, not in a fashion so literal as to make effective frontier
defence impossible. But such legal safeguards would be of use only as
long as the Senate was in reality stronger than any individual governor.
Once a commander came upon the scene with the ambition to seize
supreme power for himself and the military strength to give him a fair
chance of success, then the fear of prosecution if he failed would no
longer restrain him. Indeed the threat of political extinction in the courts
might even help to drive him into open revolt.

But if the seeds of such a revolt had been sown in the eighties, when
the young Caesar learned, like Sulla, to despise the Senate as it then was,
it must be said that Sulla’s new Senate was to show itself no more
deserving of respect. Its members lacked the individual authority, the
practical experience, the public spirit and above all the moral self-
confidence to make a success of the mammoth task of social and political
regeneration that lay before them. Many can have felt little commitment
to the preservation of Sulla’s work. The Sa//ani had come from various
backgrounds and had joined Sulla for differing reasons. Both the extent
of their personal loyalty to Sulla and the degree to which they shared his
political views must have varied enormously. Essentially they had had
only two things in common: an enemy and a leader. When both these
factors ceased to operate, their natural diversity reasserted itself. A small
core of aristocrats ~ Catulus, Hortensius, the Luculli and others —
remained totally dedicated to Sulla’s ideals, but the gulf between them
and the mass of senators grew progressively wider, while all alike,
haunted by the fear of a new Sulla, were trapped ina sterile conformism
which exalted mediocrity and looked on talent with resentful
suspicion.7!

The Senate had also been weakened by its contest with the equestrian
order for control of the guaestiones, especially the extortion court. Sulla’s
views on this subject were predictable: the juries were from now on to be
drawn entirely from the Senate. In addition he revised and extended the
whole system of standing courts ina reform which was to prove the most

11 Meier 1966 (A 72) 243, 257, 265; Badian 1970 (c 13) 29ff, Keaveney 1984 (c 93) 146ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP 203

durable aspect of his work, surviving into the early Principate (ch. 13,
PP: 512-30).

In dealing with the popular assemblies and the people in general, apart
from abolishing tribunician legislation, Sulla stood by his promise to
uphold the citizenship and voting rights of the new citizens, though
freedmen were again confined to the four urban tribes. He enfranchised
many of the slaves of his victims, allegedly more than 10,000 in number.
Since Appian stresses that they were picked for their youth and strength,
they were presumably intended not only to vote themselves but to
exercise persuasion on their fellow-voters. However, they are never
heard of again and there is nothing to suggest that they were ever called
upon to fulfil their corporate function. Clearly no man inherited their
loyalty after Sulla’s death. Like any good Roman conservative Sulla saw
the distribution of cheap corn to the people as a demoralizing drain on
the treasury, and so distributions were abolished. He also deprived the
people of the share in the choice of priests given to it by the Lex Domitia
of 104. He restored the old system of co-option and increased the
membership of the major priestly colleges to fifteen. The Sibylline books
had been destroyed when the Capitol was burned in 83 and Sulla gave
orders that the collection should be reconstructed.

He also passed various sumptuary restrictions. Gambling was prohi-
bited except for bets on certain kinds of athletic contest. Price controls
were imposed on exotic foods and limits placed on permitted expendi-
ture for everyday meals, festive banquets, funerals and monuments to
the dead, though these were much higher than those permitted by the
Lex Licinia of the late second century. Such measures were always
fashionable with reformers and always futile. Indeed Sulla himself was
accused of breaking his own laws with his spending on public feasts and
on Metella’s funeral.

Sulla’s treatment of Italy was guided by two considerations: the need
to find land for his veterans — Appian says as many as twenty-three
legions were settled — and the attitude of the Italian peoples in the recent
war.’2 Some areas, such as Apulia, Calabria and Picenum, had largely
favoured Sulla from the first. But the greater part had been hostile:
Campania, Latium, and especially Etruria and Umbria. But even in
regions that were predominantly hostile some communities will have
been well disposed to Sulla, while within individual communities the
allegiance of the leading families will not always have been unanimous. It
is possible that a few of the towns where Sulla settled his men were not
being punished for resistance but simply revived after the ravages of
war, but the vast majority had been hostile and received colonists or
other settlers to punish their recent indiscretions and secure their future

72 Keaveney 1982 (c 89) 511ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

204 6. SULLA

loyalty. The penal element is particularly clear in places where the older
community was reduced to an inferior status, as for instance at Clusium,
Nola, Pompeii and Faesulae. Essentially three modes of settlement were
employed: viritane allotments in existing colonies and municipia, the
addition of a colony to an already existing municipium, and the establish-
ment of a colony accompanied by the downgrading of the original
inhabitants. The method chosen in individual cases perhaps reflected the
degree of guilt of the community concerned. The exact number of Sulla’s
colonies cannot be determined, nor can it be said with confidence of
several of the towns where Sullan settlements are known whether or not
these had colonial status. However, Praeneste, Faesulae, Clusium,
Arretium, Nola, Pompeii and Urbana may be regarded as certain,
together with Sulla’s one colony outside Italy, Aleria in Corsica. In at
least two cases, Volaterrae and Arretium, Sulla not only confiscated land
(though some of it at least was never settled, so that the former owners
remained in illegal occupation until formally restored by Caesar in 59)
but also deprived the people of their citizenship. However, even before
Sulla’s death the courts refused to uphold the latter measure.

Some areas which had been hostile were physically and economically
unsuited to the development of urban communities, for instance
Bruttium, Lucania and some parts of Samnium. Here, and elsewhere too,
Sulla’s supporters were allowed to amass large estates. Apart from such
grants, would-be latifundists were often able to acquire land illegally
from the veterans, though their allotments were supposed to be
inalienable. Not all of them had an interest in farming, some were
cheated when land was distributed, some inevitably received bad land,
others were put off by the climate of ill will that must have greeted them
in many areas. Some will have preferred to rejoin the army, for which
there was ample opportunity in the next decade, for even those who had
been longest in Sulla’s service had got used to a life of luxury in Asia and
may have found the prospect of hard work unappealing. For the
dispossessed, on the other hand, there were few opportunities. Some
made their way to Spain to join Sertorius, some remained on the land as
tenants or labourers, some drifted to the towns, some took to brigan-
dage. Ina sense Sulla’s arrangements stabilized the tenure of land in Italy
for a generation, simply because they were so far-reaching that any
serious attempt to overturn them, however well intentioned, would
have engendered total confusion, and so such attempts were always
resisted even by men like Cicero, who had no love of Sullan possessores.
But the settlement of the veterans, though meant to bring security and
guard against a coup d'état, created widespread friction and unrest which
increased the likelihood of an attempted coup. Sulla was only very
recently dead when trouble between the colonists and the dispossessed

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP 205

gave Lepidus his opportunity (ch. 7, pp. 208-10), while by the time of
Catiline (ch. 9, pp. 346—Go) the colonists themselves were ripe for trouble.

To commemorate his victories Sulla instituted games in 81, the /udi
Victoriae Sullanae, which ran from 26 October to 1 November, the
anniversary of the battle of the Colline Gate. To coincide with this first
celebration he dedicated a tenth of his booty to Hercules and feasted the

Roman people on a lavish scale. At some point he also extended the
pomoerium (the sacral boundary of Rome); his justification was an
adjustment of the boundary between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. But
during the games his wife Metella fell ill. Sulla was by now an augur, and
to avoid pollution he had her removed from his house before she died
and also divorced her.

The consular elections of 81 may have taken place in July, as became
the custom after Sulla, so that the consuls designate came to play a
leading part in senatorial debates in the second half of the year. Sulla
himself stood and was elected, together with his most distinguished
supporter, Metellus Pius. His candidature may perhaps have contra-
vened his own /ex annalis, since he had been consul less than ten years
previously. However, we do not know when the law was passed and no
doubt the Senate would have granted him a dispensation in case of need.
Before entering office as consul he resigned the dictatorship, though the
exact date remains controversial. It would probably be generally agreed
that he laid it down at the end of 81.73 It is, however, possible that he
resigned somewhat earlier. The famous occasion when he dismissed his
lictors and walked about the Forum as a private citizen, challenging
anyone who wanted to call him to account, must surely be the day on
which he gave up supreme power, not merely the last day of his
consulship in 80. But if Sulla did this on the last day of 81, when he and
everyone else knew perfectly well that on the next morning he would
once more hold imperium and be attended by lictors, the challenge would
be curiously hollow. It is therefore tempting to believe that Sulla, who
understood the theatre, gave up his dictatorship long enough before the
end of 81 for his gesture to have at least some dramatic force.

Whenever precisely it occurred, Sulla’s resignation of the dictatorship
and his appearance as consul with Pius might be read as indications that
the crisis was over and that political and social life should now return to
normal. In this year the trial of Sex. Roscius of Ameria gave the young
Cicero the chance to preach an eloquent sermon on this text.74 He was
critical of the lawlessness and violence that had been rife immediately
after Sulla’s victory, but his real concern was for the future. It was not

7 Badian 1970 (c 14) 8ff; Keaveney 1980 (c 86) 158; contra, Twyman 1976 (B 117) 77ff, 271ff

(mid-80).
™ Buchheit 1975 (6 7); Seager 1982 (B 106); contra, Kinsey 1980 (B 56); 1982 (B $7) 39f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

206 6. SULLA

only men like Sulla’s freedman Chrysogonus who had taken advantage
of the troubled times to increase their fortunes by dubious means; too
many of the nobility had been tempted to do the same. Cicero had
probably been briefed by Roscius’ noble patrons, but he exploited the
freedom of speech enjoyed by a new man to lecture the nobles on their
social and political duties: unless they devoted themselves to the
restoration of traditional values and took up once more their inherited
burden of public service, Sulla’s victory would not have been worth
winning. Cicero was taking no serious risk: neither Sulla nor any self-
respecting noble could do other than agree with virtually every word he
said. But his closing diatribe highlights the political and moral expec-
tations that decent men might entertain of those whom Sulla had cast as
the leading figures in his republic, expectations that were all too soon to
be proved vain.

In 80 Sulla married again for the last time. His new wife Valeria, a
relative of the orator Hortensius, had picked him up at a gladiatorial
show. It was also probably in this year that a wife to replace Aemilia was
found for Pompey. Again she was drawn from the circle of the Metelli:
Mucia, half-sister of Q. Metellus Celer, consul in 60, and Q. Metellus
Nepos, consul in 57. Both the consuls of 80 were allocated provinces.
Pius received Hispania Ulterior, which had fallen into the hands of
Sertorius. After his original flight from Italy Sertorius had been driven
out of Spain by C. Annius Luscus. But in 80, after various adventures in
Africa, he was invited to return by the Lusitani and lead them in revolt,
and he soon inflicted a defeat on L. Fufidius, the governor of Ulterior.
This one last pocket of external resistance clearly needed to be nipped in
the bud, and so Pius was sent to regain control of the country. Sulla’s
province was Cisalpine Gaul, but he preferred not to take it. Instead he
moved to a villa near Puteoli, spending his time in hunting, fishing,
drinking with old friends from the world of the theatre and writing his
memoirs.

The consular elections for 79 had brought to office loyal friends of
Sulla, P. Servilius Vatia and Ap. Claudius Pulcher, who thus received
compensation for his sufferings under Cinna. But the elections for 78
were a different matter, and the course of events makes clear what
perhaps needs emphasis, that Sulla’s resignation of absolute power did
not betoken a total loss of interest in politics. He was still prepared to
intervene in matters on which he had strong views, though now he could
no longer be sure of getting his way. Of the consular candidates for 78 he
supported the claims of Q. Catulus and perhaps Mam. Lepidus, but
looked with disfavour on M. Lepidus, a renegade Marian who had
enriched himself in the proscriptions and narrowly escaped prosecution
for extortion after his governorship of Sicily in 80. Catulus safely secured

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SULLA’S DICTATORSHIP 207

election, but Mamercus failed, while M. Lepidus came top of the poll,
thanks in part to the support of Pompey, with whom Sulla quarrelled
fiercely, cutting the young man out of his will. It is unlikely that Pompey
had any specific end in mind beyond the possibility that Lepidus, if
elected, might create some kind of disturbance. Any emergency might
give Pompey a chance to further his extraordinary career, whereas for
him stability could only mean stagnation.

If such was Pompey’s hope it was amply fulfilled, though it is unclear
when Lepidus started to agitate for the repeal of some of Sulla’s
measures. The fullest source is the speech put into his mouth by Sallust,
in which Lepidus is already consul, yet speaks as if Sulla were not only
alive but still retained supreme power. Yet Lepidus had not long been in
office when Sulla died. While dealing with a dispute in the affairs of
Puteoli he suffered a massive haemorrhage, probably brought on by
acute liver failure, the result of a lifetime of hard drinking, and he died
the next day.75

The consuls had quarrelled constantly ever since taking office, but the
question of Sulla’s funeral divided them still more bitterly. Catulus was
in favour of the unprecedented honour ofa state funeral, Lepidus argued
against. On this issue Pompey supported Catulus, and the partisans of
Sulla carried the day. Sulla’s body was brought to Rome ona golden bier
with an ever-growing escort of veterans and others. At the ceremony
farewell tributes were paid by the priestly colleges, the Senate and
magistrates, the equestrian order, the veterans and the people. The
funeral oration was probably delivered by Hortensius, or perhaps by L.
Philippus — Sulla’s son Faustus was too young — and the body was
cremated. Even in death Sulla was lucky: the rain which had threatened
all day held off until all was over. He himself had asked for burial,
according to the custom of the Cornelii, but Philippus had judged it
prudent to ignore his wishes, for fear that if he were buried his remains
might one day suffer the same fate as he had meted out to those of Marius.
On his tomb in the Campus Martius was inscribed the epitaph he had
composed for himself: no friend ever outstripped him in doing good, no
enemy in doing harm.

75 Keaveney—Madden 1982 (c 95) 94f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER?

THE RISE OF POMPEY

ROBIN SEAGER

I. THE REVOLT OF LEPIDUS, 78-77 B.C.

Catulus and Lepidus quarrelled again as they left Sulla’s funeral, and
Lepidus soon stepped up his agitation. He promised to rescind Sulla’s
acts, to recall those who had been driven into exile and to restore their
lands to those who had been dispossessed to make way for Sulla’s
veterans. He may also have succeeded in passing a law reviving
distributions of cheap corn. Another issue promptly raised and con-
stantly debated in the years that followed was the tribunate. It seems,
though the text of Licinianus is uncertain, that the tribunes of 78 asked
the consuls to restore the tribunician power, but that Lepidus was the
first to refuse and surprisingly convinced a majority of those present that
such a measure would serve no useful purpose. If so, then he later
changed his mind and championed the tribunate, allegedly in the
interests of concord.

These squabbles may have been enough to inspire the consul Catulus
to introduce his law against public violence, though it may equally have
been a response to the more serious disturbances that soon arose.! The
simmering discontent created by Sulla’s expropriations in many parts of
the Italian countryside boiled over in one of the worst-hit areas, Etruria.
The Sullan colonists at Faesulae were attacked by men who had lost their
land and in some cases their citizen rights as well. The Senate was
sufficiently alarmed to send both consuls to suppress the rising. What
happened next is obscure, but Lepidus seems to have put himself at the
head of the insurgents and clashed with Catulus, who was prepared to
use force to resist him. But instead of giving Catulus firm backing the
Senate imposed an oath to keep the peace on both consuls and, to placate
Lepidus and get him out of Italy, took the dangerous step of assigning
him Transalpine Gaul, perhaps with Cisalpina too, since we find that the
latter province was occupied in 77 by Lepidus’ legate M. Junius Brutus.
No doubt many senators could not face the prospect of another civil war
that might culminate in another capture of Rome and the loss of their

' Lintote 1968 (a 62) riiff.

208

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE REVOLT OF LEPIDUS 209

newly restored authority. But then, feeling that it had humoured
Lepidus enough, the Senate summoned him to Rome to hold the
consular elections. Instead Lepidus marched on the city at the head of the
insurgents and issued a demand for an immediate second consulship. As
a would-be new Sulla he was not impressive. It was true that he had
hereditary ties in Cisalpine Gaul and needed to be suppressed before he
could gain control there and perhaps establish a link with Sertorius, but
the actual task of suppression should not have seemed forbidding: his
makeshift forces, though numerous, presented no serious threat. Yet so
haunted was the Senate by the spectre of civil war that despite his
contumacy and his military weakness some senators were still in favour
of coming to terms.

There were no consuls to give the Senate a lead, for though the year
had turned the elections had still not been held. It was left to L. Philippus
to rally opinion and propose the senatus consultum ultimum, under which
Catulus as proconsul was charged with putting down his erstwhile
colleague. The Senate also appointed a second commander to help
Catulus in this task: Pompey, whose probable calculation of his own
advantage was thus proved correct. His exact position is uncertain. His
imperium waS once more praetorian, but whether he was officially
Catulus’ legate or formally independent cannot be decided.?

As Lepidus continued his march on Rome, Catulus and Pompey
occupied the Mulvian Bridge and the Janiculum, a battle was fought,
and Lepidus retreated. Only at this late stage was he declared a hostis, a
further proof of the Senate’s conciliatory mood and perhaps of its
reluctance to resort to the devices that had been so abused in the previous
decade. Lepidus made his way to Etruria, pursued by Catulus, while
Pompey headed for Cisalpine Gaul, where he besieged M. Brutus at
Mutina. Brutus, perhaps deserted by his troops, surrendered and was
shortly afterwards put to death. The exact circumstances are obscure: the
version most charitable to Pompey was that Brutus was killed while
trying to escape. As in the cases of Carbo and Domitius there may have
been formal justification: it is not unlikely that Brutus had been declared
a hostis at the same time as Lepidus. But this killing too was remembered
against the ‘adulescentulus carnifex’, to use the phrase of the orator from
Formiae, Helvius Mancia. After the execution of Brutus Pompey drove
the remnants of his forces as far as Liguria, where Lepidus’ son Scipio
was captured and killed at Alba Pompeia. He then returned to Etruria in
time to join Catulus in the final battle against Lepidus at Cosa. Defeated
once more, Lepidus sought refuge in Sardinia, where he shortly
afterwards fell ill and died. Those of his men who did not disperse were
taken to Spain by Perperna.

2 Seager 1979 (c 258) t5f; Helvius Mancia: Val, Max. v1.2.8,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

210 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

Now that the rising was safely subdued Catulus ordered Pompey to
disband his troops, but Pompey refused. The object of his contumacy
was limited and specific. He was not threatening civil war to make
himself dictator, he merely wanted to be sent to Spain, where for two
years Metellus Pius had been making little headway against Sertorius. It
is probable that Pius had already asked for support; the only question
was who should be sent to assist him. Consuls had at last been elected for
77: Mam. Lepidus, in whose favour another loyal Sullan, C. Scribonius
Curio, had stood down, and D. Brutus. Both, however, had declared
their unwillingness to go to Spain. This refusal should not be taken as a
sign of sympathy for Lepidus or Sertorius himself; they simply had no
wish to undertake a difficult, dangerous and unrewarding war.? But it
put the Senate in a quandary, for several other potential commanders
were already engaged elsewhere: Servilius Vatia in Cilicia against the
pirates, Ap. Claudius in Macedonia and C. Cosconius in Illyricum. As
Pompey no doubt knew, there was no candidate more likely than
himself, indeed there was none at all. It was his old protector L.
Philippus who took the lead in pointing out to the Senate that it had no
choice and proposed that Pompey be sent to Spain ‘non pro consule’ as
he put it ‘sed pro consulibus’.

II. POLITICS AT ROME, 77~71 B.C.

The young Caesar had returned to Rome from service in Cilicia under
Servilius Vatia as soon as he heard of Sulla’s death. Unlike his brother-in-
law L. Cinna, who was one of those forced to take refuge with Sertorius,
he had prudently avoided involvement with Lepidus. But in 77 he
prosecuted Cn. Cornelius Dolabella, consul in 81 under Sulla’s dictator-
ship, who had returned from his province of Macedonia to celebrate a
triumph. Dolabella could command distinguished advocates — Horten-
sius and C. Cotta, Caesar’s uncle by marriage — and Caesar not
surprisingly failed to win his case. But his efforts put him in the public
eye and gained him the good will of the Greeks, who turned to him again
in the following year for help against another Sullan exploiter, C.
Antonius. The case was heard by M. Lucullus, the peregrine praetor,
who found in favour of the Greeks, though Antonius escaped by
summoning the tribunes to his aid. Lucullus’ edict (concerning the
delicts that he would permit to be prosecuted before him) bears witness
to the disturbed conditions still prevalent in the Italian countryside, for
he found it necessary to include an action against crimes committed by
armed bands of slaves.

The dominant political theme of the decade was to be the campaign to

> Seager 1979 (c 258) 17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POLITICS AT ROME 211

restore the tribunician power. After the abortive approach made by the
tribunes of 78 to Lepidus and Catulus, nothing is heard of any agitation
in 77, when the upheaval caused by Lepidus may have pushed the matter
into the background. But in 76 a tribune, Cn. or L. Sicinius, raised the
question of tribunician rights again. However, he had to face vigorous
opposition from one of the consuls of the year, C. Curio, who more than
made up for the notorious inertia of his colleague Cn. Octavius. What
happened to Sicinius is far from clear: in the words put by Sallust into the
mouth of Licinius Macer, Curio hounded him to destruction, whatever
that may mean. Q. Opimius, a tribune of 75, somehow offended against
Sulla’s ordinances in the exercise of his veto and, perhaps more
importantly, uttered sentiments unwelcome to distinguished men. On
laying down his office he was prosecuted by Catulus and Hortensius and
suffered a ruinous fine.

The consuls of 75 were L. Octavius, as lifeless as his namesake in the
previous year, and C. Cotta, the former friend of Livius Drusus, an
ambitious man witha brother standing for the consulship of 74, who was
ready not only to spend money but also to pass laws that had popular
appeal in order to win support. It was perhaps this motive, rather than
fear, as Sallust makes Macer claim, that led Cotta to betray his position at
the heart of the oligarchy and introduce a law, strongly disapproved of
by the rest of the nobility, which once again allowed holders of the
tribunate to stand for higher office. Cicero tried in 65 for reasons of his
own to minimize the importance of the step, suggesting that it gave the
tribunes a little dignity but no more power. Strictly speaking this was
true, but it was plain that the removal of the ban would encourage men of
talent to stand for the tribunate, so that the pressure for the restoration of
its legislative powers would increase until it finally achieved its object.

Cotta also had other pressing matters to think about. There was a
shortage of corn and prices were high. At one point an angry mob
attacked the consuls, who were escorting Q. Metellus, later consul in 69
and now a candidate for the praetorship, down the Via Sacra, and forced
them to take refuge in Octavius’ house, which was fortunately close at
hand. It is worth noting that Metellus failed to gain election.‘ In a speech
put into his mouth by Sallust Cotta admitted his desire for popularity and
insisted on his devotion to the people which had recalled him from exile.
He also catalogued the problems that faced the Republic. In Spain both
Pompey and Pius were clamouring for reinforcements, supplies and
money, while on the other side of the Roman world armies were needed
not only in Macedonia but also, because of the growing threat from
Mithridates, in Cilicia and Asia, and Rome’s economic difficulties meant

4 Seager 1970 (B 103); 1972 (B 104). For the consuls exercising censorial functions and letting
contracts, Cic. 11 Verr. 3.18; Engelmann and Knibbe 1989 (B 150) 25, line 73.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

212 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

that she was less able than before to police the seas and guard the corn
supply against enemies and pirates. This gloomy picture is largely
justified. Servilius celebrated a triumph in 75, but despite his consider-
able achievement piracy was still a menace, while the problems of
Sertorius and Mithridates remained unsolved.

The gravity of the situation in Spain was underlined by a letter of
complaint from Pompey, which probably reached Rome at the begin-
ning of 74. Sallust preserves a version. Pompey claimed that despite his
repeated appeals his army had been reduced to starvation by lack of
support from home. Spain and Gaul had been bled dry and his personal
resources of cash and credit were exhausted. The letter ended with an
oracular warning: unless help was forthcoming from the Senate, his
army and with it the whole Spanish War would shift to Italy. This should
not be taken as a veiled threat to join forces with Sertorius and invade
Italy, but rather as a hint that he might be driven out of Spain and chased
home by Sertorius. Of this there was no real possibility. Despite the
relative lack of success enjoyed so far by Pius and Pompey, Sertorius was
never in a position to mount an invasion of Italy even if he wanted to.
Nevertheless, the letter produced the desired effect. New efforts were
made to supply the men and materials needed for Spain; the consuls L.
Lucullus and M. Cotta were prominent among those who exerted
themselves. There is, however, no reason to assume that until now
Pompey had been deliberately starved of supplies and reinforcements by
men who resented his premature and irregular rise to prominence.
However disquietingly abnormal his career, he was pursuing it at this
time in the service of Sulla’s Senate against Sulla’s and the Senate’s
enemies, and not only he but the irreproachable Metellus had com-
plained about the problems they had encountered in Spain. Nor can
Lucullus and Cotta have been afraid that Pompey would come back from
Spain to stake a claim to the command in any war against Mithridates
that might be imminent. If he had just proved unable to cope with
Sertorius, he would hardly seem a plausible candidate for immediate re-
employment on an even more difficult mission. Lucullus and Cotta will
simply have wanted to improve the situation in Spain and leave
themselves free to exploit developments in the East.5

It is unfortunately unclear just when in 74 the consuls saw the chance
to secure for themselves commands against Mithridates. The king had
probably always intended to make a fresh attempt to drive the Romans
out of Asia Minor. The conduct of Murena, Sulla’s reaction to it and
Rome’s refusal to ratify the Peace of Dardanus will have given him in his
own eyes at least ample excuse, and he may well have believed, rightly or
wrongly, that Servilius’ operations in Cilicia were directed as much

5 Seager 1979 (C 258) 19.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POLITICS AT ROME 213

against himself as against the pirates (see ch. 8, p. 232). In 75 C. Cotta had
received Cisalpine Gaul as his province, Octavius Cilicia. Lucullus too
was allocated Cisalpine Gaul; we do not know what province was
originally assigned to M. Cotta. But when Octavius died early in 74
Lucullus resorted to sordid intrigue with the mysteriously influential P.
Cethegus and his mistress Praecia to secure Cilicia for himself. Then
something happened to cause a further dramatic revision of provincial
appointments. Lucullus was given Asia as well as Cilicia and M. Cotta’s
province, whatever it was, was changed to Bithynia, whose king
Nicomedes had died during 75. Moreover, a third important command
was created for the praetor M. Antonius to deal with piracy. (Pirates had
recently even captured Caesar, though he soon made them pay for their
presumption.)° Antonius’ appointment was to last for three years and to
cover the whole coastline of the Mediterranean and its islands up to a
distance of eighty kilometres from the sea; his :mperium was to be equal
with that of any governor with whom he might come into contact.
However, his detractors wete to say that Antonius caused greater
devastation than the pirates.

The stimulus for these developments cannot have been Mithridates’
invasion of Bithynia, which did not take place until spring 73, though the
king may have made some ominous moves in 74. The most important
factor was probably news of his pact with Sertorius, which is likely to
have been concluded in summer 74.7 Both Mithridates and Sertorius had
already received assistance from the pirates, and their agreement must
have made it seem at Rome as if all her major enemies were now
combining to pose a single unified threat that spanned the Mediterra-
nean. The Roman response, if viewed as a whole, reflects this reaction: a
stepping-up of the war effort in Spain, a drive against piracy not merely
in one isolated centre but over the whole Mediterranean, and action to
protect Rome’s most valuable province, Asia, and the obvious prime
target for invasion, Bithynia, against any new initiative by Mithridates.

The tribunician power was again a cause of agitation in 74, but in this
year it became somewhat fortuitously linked with another matter of
which nothing had yet been heard since Sulla’s legislation on the subject
~ senatorial control of the courts. The cause of the tribunes was taken up
by L. Quinctius, but like Sicinius before him he found consular
opposition too effective to be broken. Lucullus for the moment gained
the upper hand and put a stop to Quinctius’ efforts, though the tribune
never forgave his adversary and was able to secure revenge some years
later. But Quinctius was also exercised by another issue: bribery in the
courts, as exemplified at the prosecution by Cluentius of Oppianicus for
attempted murder, one of the high spots of that lurid tale of the

6 Ward 1977 (c 151). 7 McGing 1984 (D 33) 17f; Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 1G2ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

214 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

traditional rustic virtues so deviously narrated in Cicero’s pro Cluentio.
Quinctius defended Oppianicus, who was nevertheless condemned. The
tribune decided that his client must therefore be the innocent victim of
bribery — in fact it seems highly likely that substantial sums had been
expended by both parties — and mounted a violent campaign against the
president of the court, C. Iunius, and corrupt senatorial courts in
general. From this point on the themes of the tribunate and the courts
seem to have been linked in the public mind, though at this stage
Quinctius’ involvement was all that they had in common.

In 73 another tribune carried on the work of agitation, C. Licinius
Macer, orator and historian. The speech ascribed to him by Sallust
contains predictable complaints against domineering consuls and exhor-
tations to the people to stand up for its rights. More importantly, for the
first time the name of Pompey is brought into conjunction with the
question of the tribunate. Macer allegedly made two claims. First, he said
that those who wished to keep the tribunes powerless were putting
forward the implausible excuse for delay that they could not come to any
decision until Pompey returned. If this argument was really being used
as a delaying tactic it must have caused a great deal of exasperation, since
to claim that the Senate could not pronounce on the matter in the absence
of one young man who was not even a senator was patently absurd. But
Macer also claimed to know that when he did come home Pompey would
use such influence as he had in favour of the restoration of tribunician
power. It is hard to know whether Macer was telling the truth. It is not
impossible that Pompey had already decided the line he was going to
take on this issue and had made his views known to Macer with
permission to publish, but there is no evidence now or later for any
political link between the two men. It is therefore perhaps more likely
that this was a cunning move by Macer made on his own initiative. By
taking Pompey’s name in vain, he could create in the people expectations
of Pompey’s support which Pompey, whatever his wishes, could not
then disappoint without running the risk of a loss of popularity.

The year 73 also provided evidence of continuing problems with the
corn supply. The governor of Sicily, C. Verres, was instructed first by a
decree of the Senate, then by a law passed by the consuls, M. Lucullus
and C. Cassius Longinus, to buy corn at a fair price in Sicily, over and
above the regular annual tribute, for shipment to Italy. The law also
provided for the sale of corn at a moderate fixed price (such provision
had been abolished by Sulla). The model was a law of C. Gracchus, but
the provenance of the present measure made it possible for the popular
tribune Macer to attack it as a miserly sop designed only to lull the plebs
into acceptance of its servitude.

It was the conduct of Verres in Sicily that brought to the attention of

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SERTORIUS AND SPARTACUS 215

the Senate in 72 another of the subjects that was to come to the fore in 70,
the misbehaviour of provincial governors. One of Verres’ many victims
was Sthenius of Himera (Thermae), who had secured the patronage of
Pompey in 82 and had other protectors at Rome. Though the whole
story of Verres makes it painfully clear that Roman patrons did as little
for their provincial clients as was humanly possible,’ Sthenius’ case was
taken up by the consuls of the year, L. Gellius Publicola and Cn.
Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. Both of these men appear to have been
well disposed towards Pompey: they legislated to empower Pompey and
Pius to make grants of Roman citizenship in Spain as a reward for
services rendered. The best-known beneficiary of this measure was L.
Cornelius Balbus of Gades. Lentulus also passed a law, consistent with
his stance as censor two years later, demanding full payment to the
treasury by those who had bought up confiscated property, many of
whom had been granted remissions by Sulla of all or part of the price.

Sthenius’ case was raised again by a tribune of 71, M. Lollius
Palicanus, who may with some plausibility be regarded as an adherent of
Pompey. He came from Picenum, Pompey’s home territory, his sister or
daughter married A. Gabinius, and his candidature for the consulship in
67 was ruthlessly blocked by the consul C. Calpurnius Piso, a committed
opponent of Pompey. Palicanus also Spoke on the subject of the
tribunician power, while evidence that is unfortunately not reliable
names him as the originator of the tripartite division of the juries that
was brought in by L. Cotta in the following year. Whatever the truth of
this last matter, it can at least be said that by the time of Pompey’s return
from Spain the restoration of the tribunician power, the composition of
juries and the conduct of provincial governors had all emerged as issues
on which action was needed and which for various reasons were closely
linked in men’s minds.

III. THE WARS AGAINST SERTORIUS AND SPARTACUS,
79-71 B.C.

Sertorius’ defeat of Fufidius in 80 (ch. 6, p. 206) made it clear that he
deserved to be taken seriously. Hispania Ulterior was assigned to Sulla’s
colleague in the consulship of 80, Metellus Pius; the governor of Citerior
was M. Domitius Calvinus. Pius’ plan seems to have been to crush
Sertorius between himself and Calvinus, but Sertorius sent a force under
L. Hirtuleius to prevent Calvinus’ approach, and the proconsul was
defeated and killed. Hirtuleius is described as quaestor of Sertorius;
perhaps he had been legitimately appointed in 83, or perhaps Sertorius
had already begun the practice of bestowing Roman titles on his

8 Brunt 1980 (c 33).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8007 ‘sserg Aisr9ATU aSpiquIKD © sUTTUO saoistpy aSspyquie;

utedg 3

INVLIIVTE \ ~
enue WIGS
; 1 DIvA

eeu0odw

S970)

SIUNLSY
I¥EVINVD

SERTORIUS AND SPARTACUS 217

subordinates. The campaign was fought in southern Lusitania, between
the Guadiana and the Tagus, towards and beyond which Metellus
advanced from his base at Metellinum on the Guadiana. But the only
other conspicuous success of the year belonged to Sertorius, who
defeated and killed Pius’ legate L. Thorius Balbus in the neighbourhood
of Consabura. It is probable that the earliest negotiations between
Sertorius and Mithridates belong to 79, though for the moment nothing
came of them.°

For 78 Pius chose a different line of advance, operating to the west and
south-west and besieging Lacobriga. He summoned assistance from the
governor of Transalpine Gaul, L. Manlius, but Hirtuleius was again
equal to his task of protecting Sertorius’ rear: Manlius was defeated and
forced to return to Gaul. This second year of failure led Pius to ask for
reinforcement. In 77 Sertorius and Hirtuleius changed positions. Hirtu-
leius was deputed to defend Lusitania and keep Metellus contained,
while Sertorius mounted an invasion of Citerior, advancing along a line
from Consabura to Bilbilis by way of Segobriga, Caraca and Segontia. In
the Ebro basin, in addition to his capital Osca, Sertorius controlled the
strategic centres of Calagurris and Ilerda. This campaign brought him to
the height of his power: only the south remained outside his domain. He
had also in the course of the year received considerable reinforcements
led by M. Perperna, who had escaped from the collapse of Lepidus’
rising first to Sardinia and then to Spain, bringing with hima substantial
number of troops. It is said that on his arrival Perperna wanted to
maintain his independence and refused to join Sertorius until his men
compelled him to do so. On the other side Metellus’ request for help
produced a result that he can hardly have expected, though there is
nothing to suggest that he was displeased at the outcome. The consuls of
77 had no desire to go to Spain, whereas Pompey was eager for further
employment and, thanks to the backing of L. Philippus in the Senate,
secured a proconsular command to assist Metellus. But Pompey had to
deal with rebellious tribes in Gaul and was forced to winter at Narbo,
arriving in Spain only in the spring of 76.!°

To oppose him Sertorius sent Perperna to cover the coastal region
between Saguntum and Tarraco. Hirtuleius was again instructed to tie
Metellus down in Lusitania and prevent his moving to meet Pompey,
while Sertorius kept himself in reserve on the upper Ebro to intervene as
developments might dictate. Pompey enjoyed some initial success,
winning over the Indigetes and Lacetani, then advancing southwards.
His aim was to gain control of the east coast as a springboard for
expansion inland. Once Perperna had failed to stop him from crossing

® Scardigli 1971 (c 130) 252ff; Glew 1981 (D 19) 126; contra, Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 161.
10 Gelzer 1949 (c 200) 47; Gabba 1958 (B qo) 301; contra, Grispo 1952 (E 18) 202 (autumn 77).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

218 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

the Ebro, it was inevitable that action would be concentrated around
Valentia, the next major obstacle for Pompey, since Saguntum and
Lauro just to the north were hostile to Sertorius. This determined
Sertorius’ next move: an attempt to seize Lauro in order to block
Pompey’s route to Valentia. It brought him a brilliant success. Pompey
lost 10,000 men, including his legate D. Laelius, and had to endure the
humiliation of watching while Sertorius sacked and destroyed the city.
This victory was, however, offset shortly afterwards when Metellus
inflicted a crushing defeat on Hirtuleius at Italica. It is not clear whether
in abandoning his original course of avoiding a pitched battle Hirtuleius
acted on his own initiative or on instructions from Sertorius. Possibly
Metellus had shown signs of marching east to assist Pompey and
Hirtuleius had felt desperate measures were called for to prevent him.
But though Pius’ victory left him free to do so, instead he headed further
north to Catalonia. After the débacle at Lauro Pompey had withdrawn
beyond the Ebro, so that Sertorius and Perperna were free to move to
Lusitania to try to repair the situation there, while C. Herennius was left
to guard Valentia.

After an incursion into Celtiberia during the winter of 76/5 Pompey
again set out to subdue the east coast, drawing Sertorius and Perperna to
confront him, while Pius marched against Hirtuleius, who remained in
Lusitania. Despite his experience of the previous year, and probably
despite clear orders from Sertorius, Hirtuleius came to meet him and a
battle was fought at Segovia. The result was catastrophic for Sertorius.
Though Pius himself was wounded, Hirtuleius and his brother were
killed and the rebel forces overwhelmingly defeated. Again Pius, as in

the previous year, was free to make for the east coast. There Pompey had
scored an initial success, defeating Perperna and Herennius, who was

killed, outside Valentia and taking the city. Over-confidence and the
desire to beat Sertorius without waiting for Pius to arrive made him then
attack the enemy leader near the Sucro. The result of the battle was
inconclusive, though Pompey himself was lucky to escape with his life.
Before further action was possible, Metellus appeared with news of the
death of Hirtuleius. Despite the fact that both his opponents were now
arrayed against him Sertorius felt the need to fight again to restore
morale. The battle took place near Segontia.!! Again it was indecisive:
Sertorius himself defeated Pompey, whose brother-in-law C. Memmius
was killed, but Perperna failed yet again, this time against Pius. Sertorius
withdrew to Clunia, where he was blockaded for a time, though not
without inflicting some losses on the besiegers. Then his opponents
withdrew for the winter, Pius to Gaul, Pompey north of the Ebro, where
he once again mounted an expedition into the hinterland.

"App. BCw. 1.110.515 with Gabba ad /oc.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SERTORIUS AND SPARTACUS 219

Over the winter of 75/4 both sides engaged in negotiations of one kind
and another. Both Pompey and Pius had already complained more than
once in letters to Rome that they needed more men, more money and
more supplies, but during the winter Pompey wrote again in terms
alarming enough to galvanize the consuls into action. It is also probably
to this winter that the renewal of Sertorius’ dealings with Mithridates
should be assigned, with agreement being reached in the summer of 74.
The pact itself has nothing surprising about it. More than once in
Rome’s recent civil wars the participants had sought the aid of for-
eigners: Marius and Cinna that of the Samnites in 87, Sulla that of
Mithridates in 85, Domitius that of Hiarbas in 81. Ancient and modern
authorities alike differ vehemently over one point alone: whether
Sertorius was prepared to concede to Mithridates not only Bithynia and
Cappadocia but also the Roman province of Asia.!? The conflicting
traditions about Sertorius are so tendentious that we cannot now be
certain whether or not he would have thought such a concession
compatible with the dignity of Rome or his own. But it need not be
supposed that Mithridates would have insisted on the cession of Asia
before agreeing to a treaty. From his point of view Sertorius’ function
was to keep the Romans busy well away from Asia Minor. If his own
enterprises there were successful he would have no need to abide by any
agreement with Sertorius, whatever might have happened in Spain in the
mean time. It is noteworthy that the king also sent an envoy to Pompey,
though what he hoped to gain is by no means clear.

Mithridates agreed to send ships and money in exchange for military
advisers, but by the time they arrived in 73 it was too late, for already in
74 the tide had begun to turn. Pompey and Metellus changed their
tactics, abandoning the attempt to bring the enemy to battle in favour of
a policy of reducing his strongholds. Both generals operated in Celti-
beria: Pompey was forced by Sertorius to raise the siege of Pallantia but
took Cauca, while Pius secured Bilbilis and Segobriga. At the end of the
season they combined against Calagurris, but without success. In 73
Pompey operated again in Celtiberia, this time alone. By now the falling-
away of Sertorius’ Spanish support was even more marked, and he
responded with harsh reprisals. By the end of the year almost all the
towns of Celtiberia, the Ebro valley and the eastern seaboard had gone
over: only Ilerda, Osca, Calagurris, Tarraco and Sertorius’ port of
Dianium remained loyal.

But it was his Roman officers who finally hastened Sertorius’ inevi-
table end. The motives of the conspirators headed by Perperna are hard
to disentangle from the moralizing and propaganda of our sources, but it
seems likely that the setting of a price on Sertorius’ head by Pius may

'2 Cf. Berve 1929 (c 26) 203ff; Gelzer 1962-4 (A 41) 1, 139ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

220 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

have encouraged his assassins to hope at least for amnesty if not rewards.
Sertorius’ murder marked the virtual end of resistance. A few towns held
out to the bitter end: in Celtiberia Uxama and Clunia, in the Ebro basin
Calagurris and Osca, and on the coast Valentia. But almost nobody was
ready to fight for Perperna, who was quickly defeated by Pompey and
put to death, despite his attempt to buy his life with Sertorius’ papers,
which Pompey wisely destroyed unread in the interests of concord.
Both in antiquity and in more recent times Sertorius has provoked the
most disparate reactions.!3 In consequence nothing can be said with
confidence and any statement about his character and intentions must be
regarded as conjectural. Like others who escaped from the collapse of
the resistance to Sulla in Italy, he tried to carry on the struggle elsewhere
by exploiting local backing. He brought with him to Spain relatively few
Roman and Italian supporters, though he acquired more with the arrival
of Perperna, and he seems to have made no great appeal to Romans and
Italians settled in the peninsula. From first to last the backbone of his
following was formed by the native tribesmen who had invited him to
lead them. Their goal must surely have been to liberate themselves from
Roman domination, not merely to contribute to a change of government
at Rome in the highly speculative hope that Sertorius and any other
surviving opponents of Sulla might prove less ruthless in the exploi-
tation of the provinces than the Sa//ani. Yet the liberation of Spain from
the Roman yoke cannot have been any part of Sertorius’ plans. It must
therefore be true in some degree that, whatever his ultimate purpose,
Sertorius was cheating his Spanish followers and using them for selfish
ends. What that ultimate purpose was remains obscure. Sertorius
appointed his officers to magistracies with Roman titles, he provided for
the education in Roman style of the Spanish princelings he gathered as
hostages at his capital of Osca, and he established, probably after the
arrival of Perperna, a body which he called the senate, in which
Mithridates’ demand for the surrender of Asia was debated. These facts
in themselves are hardly surprising. Sertorius, like the Italians in the
Social War, knew only the Roman political and military system. It was
natural, if not inevitable, that he should take it as his model when trying
to impose some order on the situation in which he found himself. It is
possible, though this is far less certain, that Sertorius conceived of his
entourage as a genuine alternative to Rome, a Rome-in-exile. But even if
that is so, it is still impossible to discover what Sertorius conceived of as
the ultimate solution to this schism. Despite certain alarmist rumours
put about at Rome he cannot have hoped to emulate Hannibal and
mount an invasion of Italy. For that his forces were never strong
enough, and his Spanish troops would not have followed him in an
') Cf. Schulten 1926 (c 131A); Treves 1932 (C 144); Gabba 1973 (c 55) 287ff, 427ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SERTORIUS AND SPARTACUS 221

enterprise which, regardless of its prospects of success, was completely
irrelevant to their own aspirations. It may well be that for some time
before the end the war had become for Sertorius an end in itself, beyond
which he no longer looked. It was perhaps the realization of this, more
than jealousy and Sertorius’ increasingly cantankerous behaviour, that
finally turned his officers against him. As for the Spaniards, once they
understood that he had never had anything to offer them as a politician
and now had nothing more to offer as a leader, most of them abandoned
both him and the struggle. Those who carried on were fighting, not for
anything that Sertorius had ever stood for, but for the freedom which
had inspired them to rebel in the first place.

No details are known of Pompey’s settlement of Spain, but it seems to
have been characterized by the same shrewd blend of humanity and self-
interest as he had shown already in Sicily and was to display in 67 when
dealing with the pirates. Caesar attests that he acquired many clients in
Citerior and bound the cities and tribes to him by his benefactions. Some
of Sertorius’ men were relocated in Aquitania at Lugdunum Conve-
narum, and Pompey may also have founded one city in Spain itself,
Pompaelo. High in the Pyrenees he set up a trophy, on which he did not
mention Sertorius but claimed to have reduced 876 towns from the Alps
to the boundaries of Hispania Ulterior.'*

It was fortunate for Rome that Pompey and Metellus got the upper
hand in Spain so decisively in 73, for that year saw the outbreak of a
serious upheaval in Italy itself, the slave insurrection led by Spartacus.
The origins of the rising must have seemed trivial enough: a mere
seventy-four gladiators escaped from a school in Capua under the
leadership of the Thracian Spartacus, a former Roman auxiliary, and two
Gauls, Crixus and Oenomaus, and occupied a position on Vesuvius.
They must have quickly gained considerable support, for though at first
only makeshift forces were sent against them, Spartacus and Crixus were
able to deal with them with ease. The first victim was a praetor, C.
Claudius Glaber, who tried to blockade the slaves on Vesuvius. They
broke out, took him in the rear, stormed his camp and put his army to
flight. It may have been in this engagement that Oenomaus was killed.
Two more praetors, L. Cossinius and P. Varinius, Varinius’ legate
Furius and his quaestor C. Thoranius also suffered defeats. The numbers
of the insurgents increased with alarming speed, swollen by both slaves
and free herdsmen, until Spartacus is reported to have had 70,000 men,
for whom he was keen to provide proper weapons and armour. At this
point dissension arose as to what they should do. Spartacus saw that the
best and ultimately the only useful course was to head north out of Italy
before Rome mustered a serious force against them and then to disperse

‘4 Pliny HN 111.18; v1.96; Strab. 111.4.10 (161); 1v.2.1 (190).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

222 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

and seek freedom in their various homelands. But the German and Gallic
element led by Crixus was seduced by the prospect of plunder and carried
the day. Hence the latter part of 73 and the beginning of 72 were spent in
spreading devastation all over southern Italy.15

Inevitably the growth of the insurrection provoked a reaction at
Rome. Both consuls of 72, L. Publicola and Lentulus Clodianus, took
the field with two legions each. The sources disagree as to whether the
year’s one success, the destruction of Crixus and his entire force near
Mount Garganus, was won by Gellius or the praetor Q. Arrius. Since
both men were defeated together by Spartacus, who had already inflicted
a reverse on Clodianus, it may be that they should also share the credit for
Crixus’ annihilation. Spartacus had been pursuing his original plan and
heading north, with Lentulus trying to block his path and Gellius
pursuing him. He got as far as Cisalpine Gaul, where he defeated the
proconsul C. Cassius Longinus, but for some reason he turned back and
headed for Rome. Both consuls faced him in Picenum and were again
defeated. However, Spartacus thought better of an attempt on Rome
itself and instead occupied Thurii, in the far south. He then inflicted yet
another defeat on a Roman commander, perhaps the praetor Cn.
Manlius.

The consuls were now relieved of their command by a decree of the
Senate, and a special command with proconsular imperium was conferred
on M. Crassus, the victor of the Colline Gate, who had held the
praetorship in the previous year.'® Crassus took over the consuls’ forces
and recruited six new legions. His legate Mummius joined battle with
Spartacus in defiance of Crassus’ orders and was heavily defeated. To
restore discipline Crassus revived the obsolete punishment of decima-
tion (the execution of every tenth man), then he himself inflicted a first
defeat on Spartacus and drove him southwards through Bruttium till he
reached the sea. Spartacus hoped to cross to Sicily, but the pirates who
had promised to provide him with transport let him down and a second
attempt using boats and rafts which the slaves had built for themselves
was thwarted either by Verres or the current in the straits. Over the
winter Crassus cut off his enemy with a triple barrier of ditch, wall and
stockade, probably on the promontory of Scyllaeum.!7 Twice Spartacus
tried to break out, but both times he was thrown back with heavy losses.

Despite these successes a decision was taken at Rome (whether by the
Senate alone or by the People is uncertain) to summon not only Pompey
from Spain but also M. Lucullus, who had been campaigning in Thrace,
to lend assistance to Crassus. It is unlikely, despite Plutarch’s assertion to
the contrary, that Crassus himself had asked for them to be recalled: he

1S Gabba 1967 (B 40) 321. 6 Marshall 1976 (c 226) 26ff, Ward 1977 (c 280) 83ff.
17 Ward 1977 (c 280) 89 n. 20,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY AND CRASSUS 223

seems to have been eager to finish the war unaided. Spartacus tried to
negotiate but Crassus of course refused, so Spartacus tried for a third
time to break the blockade. This time he was successful and made for
Brundisium with Crassus in pursuit. While his legate L. Quinctius held
off Spartacus, Crassus twice defeated a breakaway group under Cannicus
and Castus. On learning that M. Lucullus had arrived at Brundisium,
Spartacus turned back into Bruttium and defeated Quinctius and the
quaestor Cn. Tremellius Scrofa at Petelia. Then came the final confron-
tation with Crassus, in which Spartacus was killed, though his body was
never found. Crassus ruthlessly pursued the survivors into the hills and
eventually lined the Via Appia from Capua to Rome with 6,000 crucified
prisoners. Five thousand fugitives from the battle who were trying to
escape northwards fell in with the returning Pompey and were annihi-
lated, an incident which prompted Pompey to write to the Senate that,
although Crassus had defeated the slaves in a battle, it was he who had
finally brought the war to an end.

IV. THE FIRST CONSULSHIP OF POMPEY AND CRASSUS, 70 B.C.

Both Pompey and Crassus now looked for their rewards. The war
against Sertorius had been declared a bellum externum; thus Pompey and
Pius could legitimately lay claim to triumphs. Crassus too coveted a
triumph, but the suppression of a slave revolt merited only an ovation.
However, Crassus’ achievement was signalled by the special distinction
of a laurel wreath instead of the customary myrtle. This honour was as
much as he had a right to expect, but nevertheless he was jealous of
Pompey’s Spanish triumph. The unfriendly rivalry between the two
men, which should not be underestimated,!8 probably went back to the
time of Sulla, when Pompey, at least until the quarrel over Lepidus’
election, had been shown every sign of favour, whereas Crassus, despite
his services, had been disregarded. Yet it is said that Crassus sought
Pompey’s support when both men decided to stand for the consulship of
7o. Though both had conspicuous military success on which to base
their claims, their positions were in every other respect quite different.
Crassus was of the proper age and had fulfilled all formal requirements,
Pompey was still far too young and had held no public office. Neverthe-
less the Senate passed a decree which exempted him from the provisions
of the /ex annalis. lt may seem that, apart from his personal dislike of
Pompey, Crassus had no need to canvass his support since his own
election could be seen as inevitable. However, he may have calculated
that one consulship was bound to go to Pompey once his dispensation

18 Ward 1977 (c 280) 97ff; contra, Marshall 1977 (c 226) 34ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

224 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

had been granted and decided that there was no harm in a gesture to
make doubly sure that he himself secured the other place.

There is no reason to suppose that either Crassus or Pompey extorted
their consulships by the threat of force from a reluctant Senate or people.
The summons to lend assistance against Spartacus had of course meant
that Pompey had had every right to retain his army instead of disbanding
it as soon as he set foot in Italy, as Metellus very properly did when he
returned to celebrate his own triumph, probably shortly after Pompey’s.
It is true that Pompey kept his men together until his triumph, which was
held on 29 December 71, saying that he was waiting for Pius, and that
Crassus used Pompey’s behaviour as an excuse to do likewise. So both
men still had troops at their disposal when Pompey was given the right
to stand and when the elections were held. But neither will have needed
to resort to the threat of violence. Crassus had a strong and legitimate
claim, and a consulship, however irregular, must have seemed not only
to the mass of the people but to many senators no more thana just reward
for Pompey’s achievements. Even those to whom so drastic a breach of
Sulla’s regulations seemed distasteful or even positively dangerous will
have realized that no lesser acknowledgment of Pompey’s services to the
state was practicable. A man who had commanded a proconsular army
for the past seven years and was about to triumph for the second time
could hardly be invited to stand for the quaestorship or even the
praetorship. They might at least draw comfort from the reflection that,
although Pompey had made his meteoric rise in defiance of Sulla’s
enactments, he had at least done so in defending Sulla’s Senate against
the last of Sulla’s enemies. It is plausible that even within the Senate
Pompey’s consulship and its inevitability inspired general agreement
and even fairly widespread approval.

Pompey’s inexperience of public office was underlined when he asked
his friend the learned M. Varro, who had served under him in Spain, to
write hima short handbook on senatorial procedure. Nevertheless it was
clear that he would not be inactive as consul. In his first public speech as
consul designate he promised to restore the tribunician power and to
take measures to check abuses in provincial government and the
corruption of the courts.

The tribunate was dealt with first. It was the only matter in which
Pompey and Crassus co-operated during their year of office, passing a
joint law to restore the tribunes’ legislative powers.!° Both men will no
doubt have hoped to profit in the future from laws introduced by
tribunes, and neither will have been prepared to stand by and see the
other gain all the popular favour that the introduction of the bill would
bring to its author. There appears to have been no opposition: the

'9 Seager 1979 (C 258) 24 n. 91; contra, McDermott 1977 (Cc 103).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY AND CRASSUS 225

change must have appeared inevitable. However, the experience of some
of the tribunes of the sixties makes it clear that certain prominent
senators would rather have seen Sulla’s curbs on the tribunate main-
tained and were prepared to show their resentment when the chance
arose.20 Apart from this single instance, where their separate interests
dictated a brief collaboration, Pompey and Crassus continued on bad
terms throughout the year. At his triumph Pompey had vowed lavish
games in celebration of his victories, perhaps in a spirit of rivalry with
the /udi Victoriae Sullanae. Crassus, not to be outdone, imitated another
piece of Sullan ostentation: he dedicated a tithe of his property to
Hercules, entertained the people at a gigantic banquet and distributed a
three-month supply of corn.

For the first time since 86 censors were elected. The successful
candidates were the consuls of 72, L. Gellius and Lentulus Clodianus,
despite their failures in the war against Spartacus. They showed
themselves enthusiastic supporters of the fashionable drive against
corruption, expelling from the Senate no less than sixty-four of its
members, including a consul of the previous year, Lentulus Sura, and C.
Antonius, Cicero’s eventual colleague in the consulship of 63, while
among those who received the stigma of a censorial nota were some of the
jurors at the trial of Oppianicus in 74. They counted 910,000 citizens,
almost double the number recorded at the previous census: the long
struggle of the Italians for equal rights was, in theory at least, over at last.
They also pandered to Pompey’s vanity by reviving the obsolete
ceremony of the fransvectio equitum, a review of the cavalry, in the course
of which Pompey was able to boast that he had not merely performed the
military service required of him by law, but had performed it under his
own command.

Despite the concern expressed by Pompey before he took office, no
legislative measures were taken to combat extortion in the provinces,
while he clearly found reform of the courts a much less urgent matter
than restoring the tribunician power. He took no direct action on the
jury question and it was not until the autumn that a praetor, L. Cotta,
brother of the consuls of 75 and 74, brought in a law to divide the juries
into three equal groups: senators, equites and tribuni aerarii. (This last,
whatever its origins, was by now a purely honorific title, whose holders
possessed wealth similar to that of equites.) The language of Plutarch
suggests that Pompey gave the bill no active support. By the time Cotta
passed his law the case of C. Verres had been heard. Cicero more than
once suggests that Verres’ trial was the Senate’s last chance to retain
control of the courts, for an honest verdict by a senatorial jury might
stave off otherwise inevitable legislation. That is highly unlikely, nor

20 Seager 1969 (c 257). See below, ch. 9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

226 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

indeed is it probable that the condemnation of Verres mollified the critics
of senatorial juries enough to prevent total transfer to the eguites. Cicero
several times speaks in the Verrines as if that were the prospect which
faced the Senate, and no doubt there was talk along those lines in the
spring and summer of 70. But whether there was ever a formal proposal
for transfer, which was subsequently moderated, is extremely doubtful;
Cicero may for rhetorical effect have deliberately misrepresented and
exaggerated the effects of the Lex Aurelia in its final form, as if its
provisions were tantamount to total transfer, as certain later sources do
through sheer incompetence.?! Despite our sources’ tendency to treat
the two non-senatorial orders as one, such records as survive of the
voting of the three groups of jurors show no evidence of the eguites and
tribuni aerarii acting as a solid block in opposition to the senators. Indeed
Cotta’s solution seems to have worked very well. Control of the courts,
which had been a bone of contention since the time of C. Gracchus,
ceased to be an issue in the remaining decades of the Republic. Plainly
most of those concerned found the Lex Aurelia acceptable, perhaps
because the changes brought about by the upheavals of the Social and
civil wars and Sulla’s reconstruction of the Senate had created a
community of background and outlook between the orders that would
have been politically and socially out of the question before Sulla. Once
again, however, some die-hards in the Senate would have preferred to
see Sulla’s arrangements upheld and in consequence harboured a grudge
against Cotta.

The trial of Verres itself has sometimes been seen as a confrontation
between Pompey and the Metelli. This view cannot be maintained.?3
Cicero never lists the prosecution of Verres among his services to
Pompey, and he had cogent enough reasons of his own for taking the
case. He had made friends in Sicily during his quaestorship and, as at the
trial of Roscius, the apathy of more distinguished patrons gave him a
golden opportunity to show off his talents. To the pleasure of display
was added the challenge of a direct contest with Hortensius, with a
reward, if Cicero was successful, of Verres’ praetorian standing in the
Senate. The degree of Pompey’s interest in the trial is debatable. He
should have been concerned to protect his Sicilian clients, if only to
preserve his credibility as a patron, and he had publicly condemned
corruption in provincial government. But he certainly played no active
part in the proceedings. It is not unreasonable to suppose that he was
pleased by the outcome of the trial, but even more pleased that it had
come about without potentially invidious effort on his own part.

The Metelli and their friends did their best for Verres. Hortensius,

21 Seager 1979 (c 258) 25; Brunt 1980 (c 33) 286; contra, Bruhns 1976 (c 28) 266.
22 Seager 1969 (C 257) 682ff. 23 Seager 1979 (C 258) 25f; Brunt 1980 (c 33) 280ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY AND CRASSUS 227

who was probably an accessory after the fact of Verres’ extortions,
undertook the defence assisted by L. Sisenna. L. Metellus, Verres’
successor in Sicily, did his best to hinder Cicero’s investigations, bullied
and threatened his witnesses, tried to suppress damning evidence and
wrote to Pompey and Crassus on Verres’ behalf. Every effort was made,
first to substitute for Cicero a collusive prosecutor, Q. Caecilius Niger,
then to put off the trial till 69, when Hortensius would be consul with Q.
Metellus and the third brother, M. Metellus, would be praetor and
assigned by happy chance to the presidency of the extortion court.
Indeed, when C. Curio, the consul of 76, heard the results of the
elections, he congratulated Verres on his acquittal! Yet it is hard to
believe that, apart from the blow to Hortensius’ professional pride,
Verres’ distinguished friends were greatly distressed by the verdict.
Their motive for supporting Verres in the first place must have been
financial: with three brothers all in line for office in rapid succession,
even the Metelli must have felt the strain on their resources. They felt
obliged to try to save him, but once the attempt had been made and failed
they probably reflected that his disappearance from the scene was no
great loss.

The spirit of conciliation which Pompey had shown in Spain at the
end of the Sertorian War was further evidenced during 70 when a
tribune, Plautius or Plotius, probably with Pompey’s blessing, passed a
law granting amnesty to the supporters of Lepidus, including those who
had gone to Spain to join Sertorius.24 Perhaps the only failure of the year,
from Pompey’s point of view, was his failure to obtain grants of land for
his veterans. The same tribune proposed a bill to provide allotments for
the men who had served in Spain under Pompey and Pius, but if the bill
was passed it was never put into effect, and it may have been dropped on
the ground that the treasury could not bear the expense.

It has been claimed that the restoration of tribunician power and the
reform of the courts did not undermine the Sullan settlement to any great
degree.?5 As far as the courts are concerned that is probably true, but the
tribunate is another matter. Sulla had seen it as a major disruptive force,
and both the bitter resistance to its restoration before 7o and the
persistence of resentment afterwards indicate that leading men still
shared this view. Nor were they mistaken. The fabric of the state might
be merely shaken by a Gracchus, a Sulpicius or in time to come a Clodius.
But the exploitation of the tribunate by Pompey, Caesar and Crassus was
to do much to further that excessive growth of individual power which
the oligarchy saw, with some justification, as the greatest threat to its
collective predominance.

For the future Pompey himself could look forward to the dignity that

24 Date: Taylor 1941 (C 140) 121 n. 32. 25 Gruen 1974 (C 209) 23ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

228 7. THE RISE OF POMPEY

every consular enjoyed, but perhaps to less power than a number of his
peers. The very speed of his rise and its exclusively military nature had
meant that he had had neither time nor opportunity to develop the
intricate web of relationships that a man who had reached the consulship
by more conventional paths would have built up over the years. In Spain
Pompey had acquired some useful supporters: M. Varro, the military
man L, Afranius, who was probably praetor in 71, and C. Cornelius. But
he had also had some ill fortune: D. Laelius was killed at Lauro, though
his son preserved the connexion, and Pompey’s brother-in-law C.
Memmius died at the Turia. Lollius Palicanus gained a praetorship for
69, but otherwise no known friends of Pompey appear in the fasti. For
the moment he could only bide his time. He had declared that he had no
intention of taking a province, and Crassus had followed suit. An
ordinary governorship would merely have detracted from his glory — he
seems already to have established as his guiding principle that nothing
about his career must be ordinary. Only when circumstances created the
chance of another major command would Pompey return to the stage.
The ground had been prepared by the restoration of the tribunician
power, and Pompey could afford to be patient till the time was ripe to use
it. At the end of 70 he allowed himself the gesture of a public
reconciliation with Crassus, after Crassus had taken the initiative with
flattering words, whose double edge will have been apparent to others,
though it may have been turned by the shield of Pompey’s conceit.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 84

LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

A. N. SHERWIN-WHITE

I. PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS: MURENA AND SERVILIUS

Mithridates might have accepted what the Peace of Dardanus seemed to
offer — the recognition of his independence within his kingdom and
freedom of action to the north and west, in the regions of his Crimean,
Sarmatian and sub-Caucasian territories. The Peace required his with-
drawal from the Roman dependencies south and west of the Halys in
Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia and Cappadocia, though he retained the
coastal zone of Paphlagonia that his father Euergetes had acquired. So
too a century earlier the Seleucids were left free by the Peace of Apamea
in their activities ‘beyond Taurus’. But in 83-82 B.c. Licinius Murena,
left by Sulla to re-establish the Roman province of Asia, intervened
against Mithridates, first in Cappadocia, where the king was attempting
to restrict the territorial recovery of the restored Ariobarzanes, and then
in western Pontus, where Murena carried out two extensive raids on the
pretext that the military preparations of Mithridates for the recovery of
the rebellious Greek cities of the Crimea were in fact aimed against
Rome. After suffering the devastations of two great raids without
resistance, when Murena appeared for the third time despite the
intervention of a Roman arbiter who gave ambiguous advice, Mithri-

The principal sources for the campaigns and other activities of Lucullus and Pompey in the East are
the Mithridatica of the historian Appian, the Historia Romana of Cassius Dio, and Plutarch’s
biographies of the two proconsuls. The local historian Memnon provides an independent account
of the campaigns of Lucullus, including a lengthy internal history of the misfortunes of Heraclea and
Sinope. Allare relatively late works, written between the late first and early third centuries a.p., and
except for Memnon derived ultimately, so far as can be judged, from the now fragmentary Histories
ui~v of Sallust, the lost books 93—102 of Livy, and the little-known histories of Pompey written by
his contemporaries Posidonius and Theophanes, Much particular information about Mithridates
and Tigranes is preserved by the geographer Strabo, who devoted about half of his twelfth book to
the kingdom of Pontus, and also related the fortunes of many Greek cities of the Anatolian region,
which are independently illuminated by a number of lengthy epigraphical documents. Of various
brief epitomators Velleius Paterculus alone provides an independent survey of events, dating from
¢. A.D. 14. Finally the actions of Pompey and Gabinius in southern Syria are recounted mainly in the
Jewish Antiquities and the Jewish War of Josephus, written in the Flavian period. Thus apart from
civic inscriptions and sporadic information in speeches of Cicero, notably his De Imperio Cn. Pompeii,
the surviving sources were written in the Principate. For the first decade they are collected in
Greenidge—Clay.

229

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

230

Pontus Euxtnus
{Black Sea)

Meditnrranaum Mare
[Mediterranean Sea)

ial eae
ee

Bitlis Modern place-names underlined
Land over 1000 metres

NABATENE

9 The East

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press,

2008

231

Mare “K

Caspium Ie
(Caspian 2

rh
Sea)

PARTHIA

232 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

dates led his army out and inflicted a series of defeats on Murena’s forces,
which he pursued through northern Galatia to the borders of Phrygia.
An emissary of Sulla himself now arrived who put an end to the fighting
and secured the evacuation of Cappadocian territory by Mithridates.
Murena withdrew to hold an unearned triumphal celebration in Rome.

This affair reveals the existence of contrary policies at Rome. While
Sulla was determined to maintain no more than the former protectorates
beyond the borders of Asia in Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia, and to
recognize Mithridates as a Roman vassal, his own man was bent on
renewing war with Mithridates, and after Sulla’s death a majority within
the Senate connived at a refusal to ratify the Peace of Dardanus, of which
Murena had denied the very existence on the grounds that it was not
formulated in a written text. Yet Mithridates tried hard through his
emissaries to secure the ratification of the Peace. When his agents failed
to secure a hearing by the Senate in 78 he realized that powerful men
were keen to renew a war that offered the prospect of vast enrichment.
But he respected the Peace for the long period, ina king’s reign, of eight
years after his troubles with Murena.

After the withdrawal of Murena it was decided at Rome to restore
Roman control over Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, which had seen
no Roman proconsul since 89 B.c. A permanent province was now
established in the southern region, which was still known as ‘Cilicia’,
though it contained no Cilician territory, because the suppression of
pirates, known to have Cilicia as their main base, fell to the proconsuls.
But the first enemy was Zenocoetes, who held maritime strongholds on
the Lycian coast to the west of Pamphylia such as Olympus, Phaselis and
their mountainous hinterland. The first effective proconsul was the

consular P. Servilius, who operated with a considerable fleet of un-
known composition and a force of five legions. In his first two years (78—
77) he drove the light vessels of the pirates out of Pamphylian waters
after a considerable but unlocated naval battle, and captured the
strongholds of Zenocoetes by a series of land assaults.! He then set about
the reconquest of mountainous Pisidia and the adjacent region of Isauria,
which lies between the westernmost chain of Taurus and the open
plateau of Lycaonia.

Through Pisidia and Isauria there passed the sole useful route for
wheeled transport from Pamphylia to Iconium in western Lycaonia, on
the main route from Apamea to Cappadocia. After the laborious capture
of the central strongholds of Isaura Vetus and Isaura Nova, and the
subjection of the Orondeis people around Misthion and Pappa to the
north, beyond Lake Caralis, Servilius completed his conquest by

1 Land assaults, cf. Strab. x1v.5.7 (671) with Cic. u Verr. 1.56, 4.21, Leg. Agr. 1.5, 2.50, Sall. H. 11
fr. 81~4, Florus 1.41.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE THIRD WAR 233

constructing a military highway along his main route, to be identified
with the imperial road known from the late Itineraries which led from
Side in Pamphylia by Pappa to Iconium. He thus opened for the first
time, as the sources record, the direct route from the military region of
Pamphylia to the confines of Cappadocia. There is no evidence whatever
that his campaign into Isauria was conducted from the north, as has been
supposed, through southern Phrygia, which was in the province of Asia,
by Apamea and Philomelium. This campaign had nothing to do with the
suppression of piracy: it opened up a new approach to Pontus from the
south through Lycaonia and Cappadocia.? The threat of Mithridates
mattered more to the Romans than the activities of pirates in the eastern
Mediterranean, against whom a naval command was eventually estab-
lished in 74 at the praetorian level. Mithridates was now faced by a dual
threat from the Roman commanders in Asia and Cilicia. When war
seemed likely in 74 the consul L. Lucullus secured the province of Cilicia
rather than Bithynia, which was now available, because it was regarded
as the centre of action against Mithridates, who rightly claimed that ‘the
Romans were awaiting an opportunity to attack him again’.3

II. THE OPENING OF THE THIRD WAR

Mithridates did not propose to fight his third war with Rome single-
handed. He rebuilt his fleet, shattered by the surrender of 70 major
vessels to Sulla: some 150 warships can be traced in the operations
against Lucullus, out of an alleged strength of 4oo ships of all types. He
also made an agreement with the Cilician pirates, whose power had not
yet been broken, and secured their active assistance in the first two years
of the war. Further, before the war began he secured the advice of a
military commission from the Roman forces that were maintaining
themselves under C. Sertorius in Spain against the central Roman
government (ch. 7, pp. 213 and 219). With this help he reorganized some
part of the Pontic infantry on the Roman legionary pattern, armed with
the heavy Roman spear and stabbing sword, and secured the aid of
Roman military commanders in the field.

The immediate cause of the war was the Roman annexation of
Bithynia. Nicomedes at his death, probably late in 75, having no
legitimate heirs, left his kingdom to Rome, following the pattern of
Attalus IIT in Asia and Ptolemy Apion in Cyrenaica. The Senate accepted
the inheritance after rejecting the claims of a bastard son of Nicomedes to

2 Strab. x11.6.2 (568), Oros. v.23.22; on Isaura Nova, Sall. H. 11 fr. 87 with Cic. Leg. Agr. 1.5, 2.50,
and the inscription commemorating Servilius’ payment of his vow (AE 1977n. 816). Festus Brev. 11
improbably links the Isauri with Cilician pirates (#bd. 12.3). Military road, cf. Oros. v.23.22 with
Eutropius vr.3, Festus Brey. 11. Cf. Ormerod 1924 (A 88) 214ff; Magie 1950 (A 67) 1. 1169-74 nn.
21-5, > App. Mit. 70.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

234 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

the kingdom, and instructed the propraetor of Asia to take over the new
province. In the early summer of 74 the news arrived of the death of the
proconsul of Cilicia, who had recently arrived in succession to P.
Servilius. In the following months there was a remarkable rearrange-
ment of the consular commands for 74-73, originally made the previous
year under the provisions of the Sullan Lex Cornelia. L. Licinius
Lucullus gained Cilicia together with Asia in the place of Gallia
Cisalpina, previously assigned to him, in expectation of war with
Mithridates, and his colleague M. Aurelius Cotta secured Bithynia (ch. 7,
p. 213). Atthis moment Mithridates had made no hostile move: Cotta had
to argue during the senatorial debate on the new commands that the war
with Mithridates had not ended in 82 but had merely been interrupted.
Later in 74 the consuls were commissioned for war. Lucullus was
instructed to take command of the legions in Asia and Cilicia, together
with a legion from Italy, and in the words of Cicero ‘to pursue
Mithridates’. Cotta was left to hold the naval command in Bithynia,
using the existing provincial flotillas, together with an unspecified
military force, against the threat of the Pontic fleet.‘

What action of Mithridates prompted these decisions is not clear. It is
likely that he mobilized the great forces that he used in the first campaign
during the summer of 74, and gave the Senate grounds for the despatch
of the consuls, and it is also possible that Mithridates established
advanced forces in eastern Paphlagonia before his westward march. The
ambiguities of the principal historical sources have led to much debate
about the moment when the consuls left Italy and when the war began,
about whether they departed in the late summer of 74 and were
immediately involved in the battle of Chalcedon and the siege of Cyzicus,
or whether these campaigns took place in 73. But the neglected evidence
of a passage in Cicero’s speech pro C/uentio, the earliest of all relevant
documents, solves the problem. Lucullus was present in Rome as consul
late in November 74, when he was involved in the aftermath of the affair
known as the causa Iuniana, which the tribune Quinctius investigated
about the end of the tribunician year. Hence Lucullus cannot have
arrived in Asia and mobilized his forces much before the end of the first
quarter of 73.5 Appian, the principal source, places the advance of
Mithridates into Bithynia ‘in the beginning of spring’. Though he gives
no indication of the year it can only be 73.°

At that time Lucullus, after a training programme, mustered his five

* Plut. Lue. 6.1, 5~6, Cic. Mur. 33; Sall. H.11.71, on whose chronology see Bloch 1961 (B 6) esp. 70.

5 Cic. Clu. 90, 108, with 136-7. Lucullus operates straightaway from a base in Asia (Plut. Luc.
7-1); he never reached Cilicia. For the former controversy over the initial date see Magie 1950 (a 67)
1.1127 n. 47, 1204 n. 5, and MRR 1 106-8. Cf. Vell. Pat. 11.33.1, ‘ex consulatu sortitus Asiam’,
though sortitus is inaccurate. 6 App. Mith. 70.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE THIRD WAR 235

legions in northern Phrygia near the Sangarius river, for an invasion of
Pontus, presumably through Galatia to the lower Halys, the route that
he followed in the next year. Mithridates anticipated him by marching
rapidly through Paphlagonia into Bithynia in nine days, met with his
fleet and defeated Cotta in a naval battle off Chalcedon, destroying the
Roman fleet and driving Cotta with whatever land forces he had behind
the walls of the city. Thence Mithridates marched westwards with the
intention of capturing Cyzicus, the great port on the northern coast of
Asia in the Propontis. Lucullus abandoned his planned invasion and
turned westwards to the relief of Cotta, meeting only the rearguard of
Mithridates at Otryae in the Bithynian lowlands, between Nicaea and
Prusa.’ After a successful engagement Lucullus pressed on to Cyzicus,
where he found Mithridates vigorously organizing the investment of the
city. He required Cyzicus, with its double harbour on either side of the
peninsula in which the city stands, as the supply base for the large army
with which he intended to destroy the Roman forces in Asia, as he had
done in the first war. The sources may exaggerate when they give figures
of 12,000 to 16,000 cavalry and up to 150,000 infantry for the Pontic
army, twice or thrice the number that fought against Sulla at Chaeronea.
But there is no doubt that they greatly outnumbered the forces of
Lucullus.®

While Mithridates invested Cyzicus by land and sea, Lucullus occu-
pied a strong defensive position with his five legions on high ground
from which he could threaten the enemy’s communications, ina strategy
of siege and countersiege. He avoided a general engagement, and in a
telling phrase attributed to Lucullus by Plutarch, he ‘stamped on the
stomach of Mithridates’.° Though the king controlled the sea with his
naval forces he lacked an adequate maritime base for the supply of his
large army. Cyzicus under its civic leaders, aided by a small Roman force
that managed to enter the city across the sea channel, courageously held
out against all the efforts of Mithridates. The king used every device of
siegecraft, with assaults by land and sea, by ships and machines, and by
tunnels, to take the city. But he was eventually compelled by the
approach of winter first to dismiss most of his cavalry eastwards through
Bithynia, and later, as supply difficulties increased, to withdraw his
infantry westwards to the small harbour of Lampsacus for evacuation by
sea.

Lucullus, harrying both attempts at the river crossings, inflicted heavy
losses, taking at the Rhyndacus river (it is said) some 6,000 horses and

7 For Otryae or Otroia cf. Strab. x11.4.7 (566) and Plut. Luc. 8.6. who sufficiently clarify the
location. ;

8 Numbers: Strab. x1.8.11 (575), Plut. Lwc.7.5, Memnon (FGrH 2 b 434) F 27. 2-3; App. Mith.
69. 9 Plut. Lwe. 11.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

236 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

15,000 men, and inflicting losses of the same scale on the infantry at the
Granicus crossing. Mithridates, supported by his fleet, withdrew the
remnants of his forces to Nicomedia in eastern Bithynia. Lucullus
meanwhile had taken command of the ships that he secured from the
Asian cities after the destruction of the fleet of Cotta at Chalcedon. When
the Pontic forces were withdrawn from Lampsacus he was able in the
spring of 72 to destroy the squadrons left to block his passage through
the Hellespont, off Lemnos. The legates Triarius and Barba, likewise
provided with a flotilla from Asia, sailed through the Propontis and
rapidly captured Apamea, Prusa and Nicaea. Mithridates promptly
withdrew from Nicomedia and passed through the Bosporus to Sinope
in Pontus, but paused at the free-state of Heraclea, where he left a force of
some 4,000 men to delay the Roman advance.

In the previous summer forces had been sent by Mithridates into
Lycaonia and southern Asia to stir up the troublesome Isaurians and
Pisidians, but they were driven out by the active Galatian tetrarch
Deiotarus. The two proconsuls were now able to gather their forces at
Nicomedia, where they debated the new situation with their legates.
Despite suggestions that a diplomatic settlement could be arranged, the
decision was taken to advance into Pontus and to destroy the power of
Mithridates, while Triarius was despatched with a fleet that now
numbered seventy ships to deal with the last Pontic naval force that
survived in the southern Aegean. Total victory, with the consequent
extension of provincial rule, was the objective.

Lucullus had utterly defeated Mithridates in the campaign of Cyzicus
without ever risking a pitched battle against his united forces. The
contrast with the method of Sulla’s double annihilation of the Pontic
forces in Boeotia is remarkable. It suggests that the calculations of
Mithridates about his advantages in warfare based on mainland Anatolia
were not ill founded. Only an exceptional military genius could have
foreseen the strategy of Lucullus, who entirely neglected the usual
Roman preference for pitched battles and quick results. Mithridates’
mistake lay not in the initial attempt to capture Cyzicus but in his
persistence with the siege when the method of his enemy was revealed.
But the only alternative to an advance into Asia was to remain on the
defensive at Nicomedia in Bithynia, where he would not have been
waging war against the heartland of Roman power in the East. If he took
Cyzicus his land forces could combine with his naval power to exclude
the Romans from the whole Propontic area. But sea-power had its
limitations when the Roman legions were already established on the
Asiatic mainland before the Pontic fleet passed through the straits of
Bosporus.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CAMPAIGN IN PONTUS 237

III. THE CAMPAIGN IN PONTUS

In the summer of 72 B.c. Lucullus advanced with his main forces
through Galatia, south of Paphlagonia, to western Pontus. Meanwhile
the legate Triarius with his fleet of seventy vessels disposed of the last
Pontic fleet off Tenedos, and the proconsul Cotta with the remnants of
his original forces and Bithynian reinforcements neutralized the fortress
of Heraclea, where the Pontic commander Connocorix was besieged for
the duration of two years. With five legions of uncertain strength
Lucullus reached the lower Halys and marched downstream to the
coastal zone around Amisus unopposed. The gates of Amisus were
closéd against him, and the city withstood leisurely siege through to the
year 70. Early in 71, if not sooner, Lucullus marched with his main forces
through the Iris and Lycus valleys into the heart of Pontus. There
Mithridates had gathered near Cabira a new army numbering some
40,000 infantry (it is said) and 4,000 cavalry. Lucullus had delayed his
advance deliberately, according to the version of Plutarch, to allow
Mithridates to commit himself to a campaign in central Pontus. Aware of
the extent of the Pontic empire he had no intention of allowing himself to
be drawn into distant campaigns among the mountains of eastern Pontus
and Lesser Armenia.!°

The decisive operation took place in the summer of 71. To avoid the
forays of the effective Pontic cavalry Lucullus established his legions in a
defensive position on high ground opposite Cabira. His food supplies
came, somewhat surprisingly, across southern Pontus from Cappadocia,
where the aged Ariobarzanes still held his throne. Mithridates attacked
the supply route with his cavalry, but his assaults were repelled with
heavy losses. Having learned his lesson from Lucullus, Mithridates was
unwilling to risk a general engagement, and now attempted to withdraw
his forces eastwards into the mountains of Lesser Armenia, where his
resources of gold and silver were said to be stored in seventy strong-
holds, and where he could hope for the support of his powerful but
hitherto unhelpful ally Tigranes, ruler of Great Armenia and many
adjacent principalities. The attempted retreat turned to total disaster,
thanks to the previous destruction of the bulk of the Pontic cavalry.
Organization and discipline broke down as soon as the evacuation of the
encampments began. Lucullus was able to assault the retiring columns
unopposed, and succeeded, it seems, though it is never clearly stated, in
destroying the bulk of the Pontic army.!! Mithridates fled south-east

10 Dates: the clearest evidence is in Phlegon O/. 12.4 (FGrH, 2 B 257), who indicates that in the
course of 72—71 B.C. after initiating the siege of Amisus, Lucullus wintered near Cabira and then
defeated Mithridates in the next year. Cf. Magie 1950 (A 67) 11 1210 n. 24.

1! Lucullus succeeds: Mith. 81-2, Plut. Lue. 17-18.1. Numbers slain; Livy Per. xcvit has 60,000,
Eutropius v1.8, 30,000.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

238 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

through Comana to Armenia, where he became an unwelcome guest of
Tigranes, who left him a virtual prisoner in an isolated fortress for the
next eighteen months, through the last part of 71 to the end of 70.

Lucullus was left free to complete the territorial conquest of Pontus.
The royal residences of Cabira and Eupatoria were captured quickly, and
the Greek cities of Sinope and Amisus were taken after lengthy sieges.
Lesser Armenia was occupied, and in the zone to the north the remote
Chaldaei submitted and the wild Tibareni were chastised. These suc-
cesses led Machares, son and regent of Mithridates in the Crimean
Bosporus, who had recently been supporting the resistance of Sinope
with sea-borne supplies, to seek terms as an ‘ally and friend’ of Rome.
Earlier, the great Greek families that provided much of the administra-
tive personnel of the kingdom, including the kinsmen of the later
geographer Strabo, had betrayed their master and brought armies and
provincial districts over to the Romans. But to complete his conquest
Lucullus required the king himself, in whose person the authority of the
kingdom resided, just as a generation earlier Marius had sought the
capture of the Numidian king Jugurtha. Hence he sent the young
Appius Claudius to treat with Tigranes for the surrender of the king’s
person.

Tigranes had no previous connexion with Rome. For the past twelve
years he had been the most powerful ruler of the lands beyond the middle
Euphrates. He succeeded about 96 s.c. to the throne of northern
Armenia as the vassal of the Parthian monarch Mithridates Megas. His
kingdom at that time was apparently restricted to the basin of the upper
Euphrates tributaries and the upper Araxes, to the north of the
watershed of the Antitaurus massif, though he may have held some
territory to the south of the Bitlis pass. The western sector of southern
Armenia, known as Sophene, was held by Artanes, descendant of one
Zariadris, who like Artaxias, the grandsire of Tigranes, originated as a
military commander in the time of Antiochus III (the Great). Gordyene,
the south-eastern sector in the mountains separating southern Armenia
from Mesopotamia and Adiabene, was ruled by the independent prince
Zarbienos. While the Parthian dynasty was being weakened by dynastic
feuds Tigranes extended his power by the annexation of Sophene and the
submission of Gordyene under its prince. After the death of Mithridates
Megas he secured Mesopotamia proper, between the two rivers, and
Adiabene beyond the middle Tigris in northern Iraq, while in the north-

- east he gained control of the enclosed region of Media Atropatene.
Finally, in about 82, he expelled the much weakened Seleucid kings from
northern Syria and lowland Cilicia, and took the title of King of Kings.!2

12 For the chronology of Tigranes’ reign see Plut. Luc 21.6 and Just. Epit. xL.1.3—4, 2.3, with
Will 1982 (A 127) 11.4576.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

LUCULLUS IN ARMENIA 239

When Appius Claudius finally reached Antioch in his quest for
Tigranes he showed little respect for the king. In the absence of
Tigranes, busy with the organization of Phoenicia, Appius intrigued
with subject rulers present at Antioch, including Zarbienos of Gor-
dyene. When Tigranes on his return received him with the ceremonial of
an eastern court, Appius behaved in the crudest Roman fashion. After
delivering a letter from Lucullus, of which the contents are not reported,
he stated that he had come either to take Mithridates off for the triumph
of Lucullus or to declare war on Tigranes. The king inevitably refused to
surrender Mithridates and said that he would defend himself against any
Roman attack. Appius barely preserved diplomatic decencies by accept-
ing a single goblet from the many valuable gifts that Tigranes offered.

In the course of 70 B.c. Appius made his report to Lucullus, now busy
at Ephesus with the reorganization of Asia. When rumours circulated
about the king’s preparations for war Lucullus expressed his astonish-
ment that Tigranes should prepare to fight the Roman power ‘with cold
hopes’ after failing to help Mithridates before his defeat.!3 Lucullus
quickly left Asia for Pontus, where he made his arrangements for the
invasion of Armenia. About this time he also secured the despatch of the
usual commission of senators ‘for the settlement of affairs:in Pontus’.
The commission arrived to find that the proconsul had departed to wage
war in Armenia, and awaited his return.!4

IV. LUCULLUS IN ARMENIA

Appius Claudius could provide Lucullus with an excuse but not a
legitimate justification for making war on Tigranes. His actions at
Antioch were not those of a legate commissioned by a senatorial decree.
There is no evidence that Lucullus himself had any authority from Rome
for his invasion of Armenia. It is unlikely that he could have secured a
senatorial decree extending his zone of operations in the year 70, when
the radical consuls Cn. Pompeius and M. Crassus were in control of the
senatorial agenda throughout the year. Cicero, speaking in the interest of
Pompey in the first weeks of 66, implied that Lucullus had no Roman
authority for the invasion of Armenia, which he described as though it
was a private affair: ‘When Lucullus came into the kingdom of Tigranes
with his army . . . fear fell on those tribes which the Roman People had
never thought to provoke or to try out in war.’ The tone echoes the
remarks of the hostile praetor Quinctius who had alleged in 68 B.c. that
Lucullus was ‘making one war out of another . . . he has sacked the

'3 For the reported remarks of Appius, Tigranes and Lucullus see Plut. Luc. 21.6, 23.7.
'4 The report of victory to Rome and the arrival of the commission are mentioned retrospectively
by Pluc. Lue. 35.6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

240 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

capital of Tigranes as though he had been sent not to defeat the kings but
to strip them of their kingdoms’.'5

These critical remarks suggest that Lucullus found it hard to defend
the invasion on legitimate grounds. Tigranes was known to have had
some form of alliance with Mithridates, but, as Lucullus was well aware,
he had never yet helped him in a Roman war. A passage of Appian
suggests that Lucullus tried to distinguish between his enemy Tigranes
and the king’s subjects in Sophene, with whom the Romans had no
quarrel: ‘Lucullus asked the barbarians only for necessities . . . they
expected to suffer no harm while Lucullus and Tigranes settled their
differences.’!6 But by crossing the Euphrates Lucullus greatly extended
the foreign commitments of Rome, by making war against an indepen-
dent empire that hitherto had no connexions with the Roman state of any
sort, and eventually by invading territory to which the Parthian monarch
rather than Tigranes had the prior claim.

In the summer of 69 Lucullus selected the best of his troops for the
invasion of Armenia, numbering some 12,000 Roman legionaries — the
better part of three legions — with the unusually large force of 4,000
provincial cavalry and light-armed troops. He marched through Cappa-
docia to the Euphrates crossing at Tomisa and entered northern
Sophene. Thence he crossed the Antitaurus by, presumably, the only
easy passage of the massif east of Lake Gélcuk, down to Amida in the
plateau of the upper Tigris basin, which constitutes southern Sophene.
The invasion was aimed at the southern sector of the Armenian kingdom
around which clustered the new dependencies, Mesopotamia in the
south, leading to northern Syria and coastal Cilicia, Gordyene and
Adiabene in the east and south-east beyond the upper and middle Tigris.
All these lands had fallen to Tigranes at the expense of the Seleucid and
Parthian dynasties. So Lucullus and his army entered for the first time the
lands beyond Taurus and the Euphrates river. Armenia and Parthia took
the place of Pontus and the Seleucid kingdom in Syria as the limits of
Roman intervention.

What Lucullus intended can be seen from his actions, which reveal a
change of method from his system of warfare against Mithridates. He
now sought a quick result from a great pitched battle by making for the
southern capital of Tigranocerta, on the border of Mesopotamia, which
Tigranes was busy completing to be the centre of his new empire. The
exact location of Tigranocerta is still somewhat uncertain. All the early
evidence from Strabo and his sources places the city in the frontier zone
of southern Armenia and Mesopotamia, but the Annals of Tacitus set it
some fifty kilometres from the well-known fortress-city of Nisibis.!”

'S Cic. De Imp. Cn. Pomp. 23, Plut. Luc. 35.56. 16 App. Mith. 84.

7 Site of Tigranocerta, see Strab. xt.12.4 (572), Tac. Aan. xv.j.2. For the controversy see
Dillemann 1962 (p 262) 247ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

LUCULLUS IN ARMENIA 241

Tigranes departed to muster his main forces and returned, when
Lucullus had invested the city, with a great army organized largely in the
old oriental style with tribal contingents armed and armoured in their
native fashion. The most formidable elements were the squadrons of
cataphracts, heavy cavalry clad in chain-mail derived from a Sarmatian
model and armed with long and massive spears. Tigranes was astounded
(it is said) at the small scale of the Roman army, ‘small for an army, large
for an embassy’.!8 But in the engagement near Tigranocerta Lucullus led
a charge of Roman cohorts against the flank of the advancing cataph-
racts, ordering his men to attack horses rather than riders. The
cataphracts were driven back in confusion on to the main body, which
broke into total disarray. There was an immense slaughter, variously
reckoned at 10,000 to 100,000 men.

The Roman victory, the only formally arranged battle among the
operations of Lucullus, took place late in the season on 7 October.
Tigranes fled northwards to be strengthened by the arrival of a reserve
force under the command of Mithridates, who had been in no hurry
because in his experience Lucullus was not given to rapid action. The
flexibility of Lucullus in assessing the strategic situation and in his
management of the tactics of battle showed a high military quality. But it
was too late in the year to pursue his advantage through the high
mountains, and after some rearguard actions the kings were able to retire
to northern Armenia. Lucullus busied himself in the milder southern
region with the capture and destruction of Tigranocerta. But if Tigranes
had eluded him, he made other political gains. The local rulers of
Sophene came to terms, and various Arab princes with whom Appius
Claudius had negotiated at Antioch, made their submission. Lucullus
himself visited Gordyene, where the disloyal ruler Zarbienos had been
executed and buried in dishonour. He gave the dead prince royal
obsequies, and secured control of the treasures and supplies of the
principality. Meanwhile he sought to put an end to the imperial claims of
Tigranes by the dismemberment of the population of Tigranocerta. The
inhabitants, drawn from Syria and Cilicia, were restored to their
homelands, Greeks and native persons alike, the cost being met from the
spoils of the city. In the extreme south the last Seleucid prince Antiochus
was allowed to return to claim the Syrian throne at Antioch.

During the winter of 69/8 B.c. Lucullus became aware of the Parthian
factor. Phraates III had recently emerged as the ruler of all the Parthian
territories westwards to Babylonia, reunited after a lengthy period of
domestic strife. Tigranes opened negotiations with him for military
support, offering the surrender of Adiabene, Mesopotamia and the
‘Great Valleys’, adjacent (it seems) to Gordyene. But Phraates made

18 Plut. Lue. 27.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

242 84a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

contact with Lucullus. According to the most probable version Lucullus
sent a mission of distinguished Greeks, and the Parthian was invited
either to join the Romans or to remain neutral. Eventually it seems that
he was unwilling to commit himself, and either maintained a watchful
neutrality or, as Memnon has it, came to terms with both sides.!9

In the summer of 68 Lucullus sought to finish with Tigranes.
Marching through the Antitaurus passage into northern Armenia, his
devastations brought into the field the Armenian forces, which had been
trained by Mithridates in the past months in methods of warfare learned
from Lucullus himself. The kings avoided pitched battles with the
Roman infantry and used their own cavalry to check the movements of
the small Roman army and to attack its supplies. The zone of operations
is not defined by the sources until Lucullus moved deeper into northern
Armenia, crossed the Arsanias, the southern tributary of the Euphrates,
where he brushed the Armenian resistance aside in a considerable
engagement, and marched across central Armenia towards Artaxata.20
The northern capital, set in north-eastern Armenia, beyond Mt Ararat in
the upper Araxes valley, sheltered the king’s family, barely rescued the
previous year from Tigranocerta. But it was late in the season, and the
Roman troops, hampered by autumnal storms, protested against conti-
nuing their advance, having now endured, apart from their military
engagements, a march of some 1,500 kilometres “as the crow flies’ from
Cyzicus. Lucullus promptly turned south and marched across the
breadth of Armenia through the Antitaurus, presumably by the Bitlis
pass in the east, to the southern edge of the upper Tigris basin. There he
invested Nisibis, a strongly fortified town with a famous double wall, on
the Mesopotamian border, still held by the king’s brother. Tigranes
cautiously followed the path of Lucullus but did nothing to help Nisibis,
which he believed to be impregnable. Lucullus, after delaying his assault
in the hope of enticing Tigranes, captured the city by a night attack, and
spent the winter there, while Tigranes recovered minor fortresses in
southern Armenia. Scraps of somewhat contradictory evidence suggest
that Lucullus now planned an abortive campaign against Adiabene, still
under the suzerainty of Tigranes, for the spring of 67 from a base in
Gordyene. This may be connected with a similar scheme to march ‘up
country’ from Gordyene, placed by Plutarch at an earlier date. He
suggests that legates were being summoned from Pontus to assist,
allegedly against the Parthians.?!

Lucullus thus sought in military terms to bring Tigranes to battle by

'9 Parthia: Plut. Luc. 30.1, Memnon F 38.8, App. Mith. 87, Dio xxxv1.1-3; see below, pp. 262-5.

20 App. Mith. 87 and Dio xxxv1.5.1 explain the Armenian methods, ignored by Plut. Lue. 31.3,
5-9.

21 Campaign from Gordyene in 69-68 ‘against the Parthians’, Plut. Lac. 30.2-3, 31.1; in 68-67,
ibid. 34.6, cf. Eutropius v1.9, ‘against the Persians’.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

LUCULLUS IN ARMENIA 243

aggressive campaigns or by threatening his cities when he refused to be
drawn. Politically, as he learned about the nature of the Armenian
empire, he set about dissolving it into its original kingdoms. He was
hardly concerned about Parthia, which at this time seemed a secondary
power that had been stripped by Tigranes of its western dependencies in
Adiabene and Mesopotamia, and was separated from the Roman world
by the broad gravel deserts between Syria and Babylonia.

Meanwhile, late in 68, events in Pontus turned against Lucullus.
Mithridates, with a force at the reported strength of 8,000 men, marched
westwards into Lesser Armenia and set about attacking the Roman
troops dispersed through Pontus, amounting to a couple of under-
manned legions with supporting Asian levies. The legate Fabius was
defeated and besieged in Cabira, where he was relieved by the forces of
Triarius, marching from Asia or Bithynia at the summons of Lucullus
for his abortive last campaign.22 During the winter the peoples of
Pontus, alienated by a hostile administration, flocked to join Mithri-
dates. In the early summer of 67 he succeeded in luring out the Roman
troops, then concentrated at Gazioura, some eighty kilometres south of
Cabira, by threatening their principal storehouse of war material and
booty located in the neighbourhood of Zela. He caught them and
inflicted a great defeat on the field of Zela: the Romans lost 7,000 men
and more than their quota of officers, including 24 military tribunes.
This was the greatest success of Mithridates against Roman forces.
Though it prolonged his survival in Pontus for only another year, it
provided a golden promotion for the ambitious Roman consular
Pompey, who in that same year was conducting naval operations on a
grand scale against the persistent plague of piracy throughout the
Mediterranean area.

Lucullus in southern Armenia at the end of 68 suffered from the
insubordination of his troops, particularly the Fimbrian legions, which
had served in the East since 86. The sporadic fighting since the fall of
Tigranocerta had brought them no substantial booty, despite the recent
capture of Nisibis. In a series of disturbances the dissatisfied troops
demanded an end to the war. The young P. Claudius Pulcher, later
known as Clodius, brother of the legate Appius Claudius, began his
stormy political career by quarrelling with his proconsul Lucullus. He
incited the troops against their commander, invoking the name of
Pompey, and contrasting their supposed poverty with the proconsul’s
wagon-loads of personal booty. But when the news arrived of the defeat
of Fabius in Pontus discipline was temporarily restored. Lucullus
withdrew from Armenia in the spring of 67, but arrived too late to
prevent the disaster of Zela. The defeated remnants met him in south-

22 Dio xxxvi. 10.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

244 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

eastern Pontus. Lucullus, learning that Mithridates had withdrawn to
the stronghold of Talaura in Armenia Minor, found the route blocked by
Median cavalry. Then, ever aware of strategic advantages, he proposed
to march south-eastwards against Tigranes, who was slowly advancing
from southern Armenia by the Tomisa crossing. Lucullus’ precise
location is not given in the sources, but his base could have been the
route centre later known as Megalopolis (mod. Sivas), where the routes to
northern Pontus, Lesser Armenia, western Cappadocia, and the Euph-
rates transit at Tomisa, meet. However, the dissatisifed troops refused to
co-operate and he retired westwards into Cappadocia.

By this time it was known that Lucullus had been formally replaced in
his command by two new consulars, who reached Roman Cilicia and
Bithynia during the summer of 67 (see below, p. 249). Marcius Rex,
instructed to eliminate the pirates from their Cilician bases, brought
three new legions from Italy. Acilius Glabrio, consul in 67, was
commissioned to take over the eastern command from Lucullus by a
plebiscite of the tribune Gabinius, following his creation of the general
piracy command for Pompey, before the disaster of Zela was known at
Rome. Learning the true situation on his arrival Glabrio lingered in
Bithynia while Lucullus withdrew his battered forces into Galatia.
Mithridates recovered the whole of Pontus, and Tigranes entered
Cappadocia, whence Ariobarzanes had once more fled. The campaigns
of Lucullus, who had never suffered defeat in battle, appeared to have
been waged in vain.

V. LUCULLUS AND THE CITIES

The Greek cities of the coastlands of Propontis and the Pontic zone,
whether fighting on the side of Mithridates or for Rome, showed a
remarkable determination to defend themselves and their overlords in
the third war. Cyzicus, no longer a free-state after the first war, sent its
considerable navy to support the Romans at Chalcedon. Despite the
heavy losses suffered in the naval battle the city offered a desperate
resistance when heavily attacked by Mithridates, and with minimal
direct aid from the forces of Lucullus repulsed every assault until
Mithridates withdrew. Cyzicus received its reward afterwards in a
renewal of its former status of ‘free city’ and in a considerable grant of
adjacent territory.24

The story of Heraclea is told at length by the local historian Memnon.

23 Movements of Lucullus: winters 68-67 B.c. in Gordyene, Plut. Lye. 34.6: in summer 67 B.c. is
in Pontus, Dio xxxvi.14.1-2; frustrated perhaps at Megalopolis, Plut. Luc. 35.3-4 with Dio
XXXVI.14.1-2.

4 Cyzicus: Plut. Luc. g-11.1, App. Mith. 73-5. Rewards, Strab. x11.8.11 (576).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

LUCULLUS AND THE CITIES 245

When after the annexation of Bithynia Roman pablicani ignored the
independence of Heraclea and set up tax-collection centres in the civic
territory, the citizens yielded to the pressure of Mithridates, sent five
ships to join the Pontic fleet, and committed themselves irrevocably by
murdering the Roman tax-collectors. Mithridates, on his return from the
disaster of Cyzicus, occupied the city with partisan assistance and left a
large garrison to hold it against the Roman advance. For the next two
years Aurelius Cotta ineffectively besieged Heraclea where the civic fleet
played a notable role, until the king’s men and their supporters betrayed
the city in the absence of Cotta to the legate Triarius, while the populace,
determined to maintain their liberty, tried to continue resistance. The
garrison sailed off to safety, but the city was ruthlessly sacked: the
proconsul returned to the scene belatedly to claim his share of the
spoils.25

A similar story of dissension between a royal garrison and the local
citizens is related in the course of the siege of Sinope, the former Greek
colony that became the principal city of Pontus. Two garrison com-
manders, Cleochares and Seleucus, murdered their colleague Leonippus,
the favourite of the city population, said to be in touch with
Lucullus. They gained control of the city and sought to eliminate the
popular faction. Their greatest success was an attack by the civic fleet on
a Roman supply squadron. But when Lucullus intensified the siege, and
the city’s food supplies from the Crimea were cut off by the transition of
the Bosporan ruler to the Roman side, the garrison and its partisans
seized what plunder they could and sailed away, leaving Sinope to be
taken by Lucullus. Ata third city, Amisus, resistance was better unified.
The city stood a long siege at the same time as Sinope, aided by the skill
in siege works of the garrison commander Callimachus. But Lucullus
eventually stormed the city by a night attack, and Callimachus sailed off
with his forces under cover of firing the city walls.26

In these civic sieges the garrison commanders and the city leaders
followed a policy of vigorous resistance until the position grew
desperate, when they turned to collusion and abandonment. They
disregarded the interest of the resident population, who persisted in their
course, either out of a justifiable fear of Roman reprisals or out of a
determined loyalty to their king. The effective action of the civic fleets at
Heraclea and Sinope, by themselves or in conjunction with the king’s
ships, must reflect the independence and prosperity of the citizen bodies
that provided the ships and their crews.?’

These three great cities were ina state of desolation after their capture.

25 Heraclea: Memnon F 27.29, 34-5.
26 Sinope: Memnon F 37, Plut. Lue. 23.1-q. Amisus: Memnon F 30.3-4; Plut. Lave. 19.2-4.
27 Fleets: Memnon F 34.7; 37-2-3, 7-

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

246 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

But Lucullus set a notable example for Roman victors in his treatment of
Amisus and Sinope. At Amisus he not only tried to check the confla-
gration, wholesale plunder and massacre of citizens at its capture, but set
about a restoration as if the city had been, in the Roman formula, not
‘taken in war’ but ‘surrendered into trust’. He aided the rebuilding of the
city, the recovery of fugitive citizens, and the settlement of new colonists
on abandoned lands. Sinope was likewise restored, and both became
autonomous Greek cities within the provincial system. Lucullus was
establishing a generous attitude towards Greek cities, which despite
hostile actions in the past were the only possible base of Roman power at
this time. He cited the precedent of Sulla who authorized the preserva-
tion of Athens, however reluctantly, despite its flagrant support of
Mithridates. (The royal town of Cabira in Pontus surrendered on terms
that preserved its existence.) In complementary style after the destruc-
tion of Tigranocerta the colonial inhabitants, Greek and non-Greek
alike, were not sold into slavery but sent back to the cities in Syria, Cilicia
and Cappadocia, from which they had been drafted to found the new
capital.?8

The eventual restoration of Heraclea was not due to Lucullus, because
at the time of its capture it was in the power of the independent
proconsul Aurelius Cotta. But Lucullus was not the only senator with
rational opinions about the treatment of conquered peoples. Certain
distinguished exiles from Heraclea organized an appeal to the Senate at
the time when the proconsul Cotta, after his return to Rome, was being
prosecuted by a tribune for misappropriation of booty. The Senate,
accepting the plea that the defection of Heraclea was due to the pressure
of Pontic forces, granted freedom to the enslaved Heracleots and
restored their lands and the status of the city, though only some 8,000 of
the inhabitants could be recovered.?°

In the province of Asia the problem was different. The wealthy classes
and the civic revenues were still burdened by the impositions of Sulla for
arrears of tribute and payment of indemnities for the first war, amount-
ing to 20,000 talents. The sum was not unreasonable: Mithridates had
imposed a fine of 2,000 talents on Chios alone during the war. But the
Asian cities, whose annual dues were hardly less than 2,000 talents in all,
were steadily drained of their reserves by the continued warfare and the
later exactions of Mithridates. To meet the Roman demands after the war
they turned to the Roman financiers who came back to Asia after the
reconquest. Many of these negotiatores had lost large sums when they had
fled from Asia to escape the massacres of 88. Italy itself had been
weakened and devastated by years of civil war, which continued after the

28 Cabira, cf. Memnon F 30.1; Plut. Lue. 18.1 with Strab. x11.3.30 (556). Tigranocerta, cf. Plut.
Luc, 29.5. 29 Heraclea restored, cf. Memnon F 39-qo.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

LUCULLUS AND THE CITIES 247

death of Sulla. Hence there was a general shortage of liquid funds that
enabled the returning negotiatores and publicani to impose exceptional
rates of interest, and to enforce the most severe conditions, both upon
the depleted civic treasuries and upon the individual tax-payers. The
cities were reduced to selling or pledging their public buildings, art
treasures and revenues to the negotiatores, while the agents of the Roman
tax-collectors were occupying the lands of private citizens and imprison-
ing or maltreating the landowners, in the process of securing payment of
their extreme demands. Hence it is said that general indebtedness
increased sixfold by the year 70, when Lucullus turned from warfare to
deal with the affairs of Asia.

Lucullus established a system that freed Asia from its servitudes by the
time of his departure to Rome in 66. Interest was fixed at the normal rate
of 12 per cent a year, accumulated debts of interest in excess of the
original amount of a loan were nullified, and the exaction of compound
interest was forbidden under the penalty of the total cancellation of the
debt. Conditions being thus alleviated, debtors were required to pay off
their debts at the rate of 25 per cent of their annual income. The system
worked well, so that within four years the wealthy classes were freed
from public debts and restored to relative prosperity.*

It seems that the landed gentry from small and moderate estates
suffered most under the Sullan system. But there were a number of
financial magnates whose wealth appears untouched amid the financial
distress of the property-owning classes. Some of these helped the cities in
the post-Sullan period, anticipating or supplementing the general
reforms of Lucullus. A decree of Priene records how the wealthy
Zosimus paid for the restoration of the civic festivals that had been in
abeyance since the first war, and at Pergamum the citizen Diodorus
Pasparos was honoured for securing from the Senate some diminution of
a long list of financial exactions and abuses, excessive rates of interest,
and confiscation of estates. Joint appeals to Rome were also successful in
alleviation of burdens: the Council of the Hellenes of Asia, created in the
early years of the province, sent a mission to Rome to protest about the
treatment of the province by the tax-collecting agencies. A special part
was played by two leading citizens of Aphrodisias, whom the Council
honoured for finally securing ‘good results for Asia’.3! The great
magnates possessed exceptional wealth based on the ownership of vast
estates. The accumulation of great fortunes seems to be a somewhat new
development in the economy of Asia. It possibly arose from the sharp

30 Debts and reforms: Plut. Luc. 20.3~5, App. Mith. 83, cf. Cic. Flac. 32, OF r. 1.1.33. Asian dues
for the amount cf. Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 244 n. 21.

31 Zosimus, see IPriene 113, 37-63; 114, 17-29. Diodorus Pasparos, cf. IGRR 1v.292, now firmly
dated to the period after Sulla by Jones 1974 (D 273). Hellenes of Asia, see Drew-Bear 1972 (D 265)
443ff, revised in Reynolds 1982 (B 226) no. 5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

248 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

exploitation by enterprising individuals of the disturbed conditions of
the times at the expense of the less fortunate. Among these Hiero of
Laodicea may be mentioned, who in this period left no less than 12
million drachmae from his estates to his city. Later Pythodorus of
Tralles, an intimate of Pompey, was able to buy back his estates,
confiscated by Caesar, for a similar great sum.

The changed conditions of the cities of Asia in these years is shown by
a senatorial decree of 78 that lists the detailed privileges allowed to
certain citizens from the provincial cities of Clazomenae and Miletus
who had served as captains in the Roman fleets during the past twelve
years. Their cities were required to free them from all local dues and
liturgies, to withdraw any sentences passed against them by local courts,
and to restore any property confiscated in that period. They were
allowed in future to refuse the jurisdiction of their civic courts in favour
of the tribunal of a free-state of proven loyalty to Rome, or else the
jurisdiction of a Roman magistrate and a jury of Roman citizens. They
were also freed from any obligation to contribute to the payment of their
city’s public debts. The Senate thus interfered with a heavy hand in the
internal finances and the judicial rights of the civic courts in favour of
their protégés, who were evidently on bad terms with their fellow
citizens.32

Altogether in the late Republican period favoured or extremely
wealthy individuals tended to gain the precedence in the cities, whether
these were oligarchically or democratically organized communes. From
this milieu there emerged in the triumviral period the civic dynasts who
secured dictatorial control of their cities.

VI. POMPEY IN THE EAST

When the reports of Lucullus about the defeat and expulsion of
Mithridates from Pontus and the great victory over Tigranes at
Tigranocerta reached Rome, politicians led by the praetor L. Quinctius
began to agitate that the Anatolian provinces, now freed from the threat
of Mithridates, should be made available to the regular magistrates.
Lucullus had held them long enough, and was said to be maintaining the
war in his own interest. Hence some time in 68 Asia was restored to
praetorian allocation, and Cilicia, where Lucullus had never operated,
was assigned to the consul Marcius Rex, with three new legions and a
naval force, for his proconsular year 67. The transfer of Asia, and
possibly that of Cilicia, was effected by a law of the people.33 The Cilician

32 Hiero’s estates, cf. Strab. x11.8.16 (578). Pythodorus, ibid. x1v.1.42 (649). Captains privileged,
FIRA 1, n. 35.

3% Asia, cf. Dio xxxvi.2.2, App. Mith. go. Cilicia, cf. Dio xxxvi.15.1, 17.2, with Sall. Hv fr.1q.
For the politics at Rome see ch. 9 below.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY IN THE EAST 249

commander was commissioned to renew the warfare against the pirates
of upper Cilicia that had been suspended after the operations of Servilius
in 78-75 by the war with Mithridates. Naval operations had been
initiated earlier, in 74, when the praetor M. Antonius was empowered to
repress piracy throughout the Mediterranean area by means of a newly
created fleet of considerable, though unrecorded, size. He operated with
some success in the West, along the Spanish and Sicilian coasts, but when
he turned east to deal with the pirate bases in Crete his fleet was defeated
in 71 or 70 by the light flotillas of the pirates, which received support
from the organized cities of Crete that had remained in free alliance with
Rome down to this time.

The Senate assigned Crete to Q. Metellus, consul in 69 and issued an
ultimatum to the Cretan cities that led to open war in 68. But the menace
now extended far beyond the Cretan area. The coasts of Italy suffered a
series of piratical raids in which two praetors and their retinue were
captured travelling along the road to Brundisium, the eastern trade
routes were endangered, and the corn supplies of Rome itself were
interrupted. Early in 67 the tribune A. Gabinius with strong support
from many quarters proposed a bill that overrode the assignation of
provinces to Q. Metellus and Marcius Rex by creating a great naval
command for Pompey, now without office after his notable consulship.
He was commissioned with proconsular powers to eliminate piracy
throughout the Mediterranean area, within a territorial limit of fifty
Roman miles inland from the coasts, and with imperium (the power to
command) equal to that of any proconsul within the area. To assist him
he was given a staff of fifteen /egati — later increased to twenty — each of
whom held praetorian imperium, an exceptional development that
enabled the legates to act independently in areas far removed from their
proconsul, though still under his authority. These arrangements,
extended in the next year by the Lex Manilia, transformed the scope of a
proconsular command, though they did not subordinate other procon-
suls in their provinces to Pompey.*4 Gabinius next proposed a second
bill, before the news of Zela reached Rome, that transferred the
provincial area of Bithynia and Pontus, with the legions of Lucullus and
the remnants of the war with Tigranes, to the consul Acilius Glabrio. No
fresh troops were assigned to Glabrio, who reached Bithynia after the
disaster of Zela in the summer of 67, his consular year, to find an
alarming situation with which he made no attempt to cope: Mithridates
had reoccupied his kingdom, and Cappadocia, from which Ariobarzanes
had fled, was open to the raids of Tigranes.

34 Powers under the Lex Gabinia and Lex Manilia, cf. App. M/th. 94 and 97; Dio xxxvi.37.1-2,
42.4, with Plut. Pomp. 25.3-6; 30.1. Cf. Asc. Corn. 58c. The inscription of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus
Marcellinus now confirms App. Mi/th. 94 on the power of Pompey’s legates, cf. Reynolds 1962 (p
287) 97ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

250 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

In the course of 67 Pompey and his legates cleared the seas of
organized piracy in a brief campaign of three months. His method was to
divide his great fleet into separate divisions under the command of his
legates, and they patrolled the Mediterranean area section by section,
while he himself set about the central strongholds of the Cilician coast.
Resistance rapidly collapsed and — though no detailed accounts of any
engagements survive — Pompey with a fleet of sixty ships defeated the
main fleet of the Cilician sector off Coracesium. But in Crete, the main
centre of piracy in the southern Aegean, the proconsul Q. Metellus, who
had been active the previous year, refused to allow a Pompeian legate to
operate: he drove the man and his forces out of the island and completed
the subjection of Crete with his own legions. Exploiting against Pompey
the careful wording of the Lex Gabinia, he would tolerate no interfer-
ence with his own consular power by a praetorian legate.

By the late summer of 67 organized piracy was effectively eliminated.
Pompey was preparing to interfere personally in Crete, where he had
powers of making war technically equal to those of the proconsul, when
early in 66 his friends at Rome, acting through the tribune C. Manilius,
were able to capitalize on the disaster of Zela by proposing the transfer of
the command against Tigranes and Mithridates to Pompey. This bill set
aside the commands of Marcius and Acilius, who had been assigned the
territorial provinces of Lucullus. Acilius was so slow to take up his
authority under the second Lex Gabinia that Lucullus was still quartered
in Galatia with his legions when Pompey arrived to take over his new
command. Since the former proconsuls were legitimately deprived of
their commands before the end of their normal tenure this was in no way
a coup d’état. By the Lex Manilia Pompey was given powers extending
what he had already secured through the Lex Gabinia to enable him to
deal with what appeared to be a great military crisis. Men and money
were assigned to him on an exceptional scale because normal arrange-
ments had proved inadequate. Though Plutarch and Appian write
loosely as if Pompey had control of the armies of the whole empire, his
powers were limited to a provincial and military area that corresponded
to the extreme limits of the Armenian empire that Lucullus had invaded.
Allied ‘kings and dynasts, tribes and cities’ were required to assist him, as
was normal in any provincial war. An innovation was the grant of the
power of making peace and war and forming alliances, as Lucullus had
done without specific authority (see above, pp. 239-43). The vast
distance of the area of warfare from Rome made any consultation with
Rome impracticable: the consuls of the previous century, operating in
the Aegean zone, had regularly secured retrospective authorization of
their arrangements.

The size of the army allocated to Pompey is never clearly indicated.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY IN THE EAST 251

Plutarch’s figure of a force of 120,000 men authorized by the Lex Gabinia
—no less than the strength of twenty-four legions — is wildly out of scale
for any army of the later Republican period before the last years of the
second triumvirate, and in no way fits the grant of 6,000 talents for the
expenses of three years. In the campaign of 66 against Mithridates
Pompey used the remnants of the army of Lucullus, amounting at most
to three weakened legions, and the three legions of Marcius Rex from
Cilicia, together with whatever legionary forces he held in lowland
Cilicia after the reduction of the pirate bases. Though no other figures
are known, it can be calculated from the total sum of money that Pompey
distributed to his troops at the end of his command in 62 that his army
then numbered some 45,000 serving legionaries — if one counts by the
scale of individual grants that Caesar made in 48 B.c. These would
comprise the manpower of some nine or ten legions, the largest army
that had yet served in Anatolia.35

The Lex Manilia that proposed this command was supported by the
praetor M. Cicero in a speech of skilful misrepresentation. The province
of Asia, with its public revenues and the private investments of Roman
financiers, is said to be threatened with invasion by the old enemy
Mithridates. Border villages of Bithynia have been burned, and the
inadequacy of the proconsul Glabrio is noted. There is no mention of the
five or six legions present in Galatia and Cilicia. Instead Cicero insists on
the necessity of sending a great general to save the richest source of
Roman revenue. There is no hint of a war of expansion that would
reduce the whole Armenian empire to subject status and lead to the
annexation of Syria as a province. Not a word is said about the vast
treasures that still awaited collection in the royal strongholds or the
extension of the system of imperial taxation to great new provinces that
would enrich the revenue of Rome. Instead the avarice of previous
proconsuls is contrasted with the restraint of Pompey. Even Lucullus is
not spared: though his successes against Mithridates are fairly summar-
ized, his achievements in Armenia are minimized, with a dark reference
to the plunder of a shrine of great wealth.% Cicero, like Sulla, appears to
lack interest in the expansion of the Roman empire. But he reveals the
political strength of the economic class of the tax-farmers and bankers
that supported the despatch of Pompey and equally the crude desire for
vast enrichment that possessed many members of the magisterial class.

Pompey, hearing of his new appointment early in 66, set about
preparations for land warfare, gathering his forces inside Asia and

35 Legions: the financial argument depends on the comparison of Plut. Pomp. 45.4, App. Mith.
116, Pliny HN xxxvir. 16, with App. BCiv. 11.102 (422), on the distribution scale of Caesar.
3 Cic. De Imp. Cn. Pomp. 23.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

252 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

Galatia for an invasion of Pontus. Having learnt of the negotiations of
Lucullus with the Parthian monarch, he renewed contact with king
Phraates and secured his assistance. Tigranes was consequently occupied
by a Parthian invasion from Media aimed at Artaxata in the summer of
66, and Mithridates was denied any help from Armenia when Pompey
made his attack. But first Pompey opened negotiations with Mithridates,
who was prepared to parley, as he had done in the past. When formal
submission was required, and the surrender of his organized bands of
Roman deserters, Mithridates broke off these negotiations. Pompey was
following normal Roman procedure: as recently as the Cretan War the
enemy was offered terms that were severe but not outrageous before
fighting began.?’ Throughout his eastern command Pompey was to
secure as much by military diplomacy as by naked force: after the
summer of 65 his only considerable military operation was the siege of
the fortress at Jerusalem.

Mithridates concentrated his forces, reduced to a figure of some
30,000 infantry, predominantly bowmen, and 2,000 or 3,000 cavalry, at
the head of the Lycus valley in Lesser Armenia, a land that had suffered
little from the past campaigns and housed the royal treasure-stores. In
this mountainous zone he occupied a strong position on the unidentified
heights of Dasteira, where Pompey endeavoured to encircle him with a
series of fixed positions. After some six weeks of evenly balanced
fighting Mithridates extricated his forces and withdrew by night
eastwards towards the borders of the Armenian kingdom. Pompey
pursued, and managed to cut off the Pontic army ina defile, where a night
battle was fought in which the Pontic resistance rapidly collapsed. Ten
thousand casualties were said to have been inflicted, and Mithridates
escaped with about two thousand men to Sinora, the most easterly of his
treasure-houses in Lesser Armenia. This is the essence of the story that
can be recovered from the somewhat contradictory narratives of
Plutarch and Dio, a brief summary in Strabo, the earliest source, and the
elusive account of Appian, who describes an unlocated final battle in
different terms. The only firm evidence for the location of the campaign
is that the final phase took place in the district where Pompey later
established the memorial settlement of Nicopolis, and that the last battle
was within the territory of Lesser Armenia.*8

At Sinora Mithridates learned that Tigranes had turned against him.
He disbanded most of his followers and made his way with an essential
quantity of coined money through northern Armenia to the coast of
northern Colchis. There he remained for the following winter in the

37 Cretan terms, cf. Diod. xu.1.2—3, App. Sik. 6.

8 Sources, cf. Strab. x11.3.28 (555), Plut. Pomp. 32.4, Dio xxxv1.48, Oros. v1.43. App. Mith. 99-
100 has an unlocated battle description.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY IN THE EAST 253

stronghold of Dioscurias, situated near Sorghum, where the outermost
chain of the Caucasus mountains reaches the sea. Next spring he
withdrew across the mountains through hostile tribes to the coastal
steppes beyond, whence he made his way round the sea of Azov, to his
last strongholds in the Crimea, held by his disloyal son Machares.

In the latter half of 66 Pompey quickly abandoned the pursuit of
Mithridates to secure the submission of Tigranes, the second part of his
task. Tigranes, harassed by the Parthians, whom he forced to withdraw
by a defensive strategy, yielded straightway to the overwhelming power
of Pompey. When the Roman legions, marching through the upper
Euphrates and the Araxes valleys, approached Artaxata, the northern
capital, Tigranes rode out in royal attire to meet Pompey. He set his
diadem at the feet of the imperator, and made a traditional proskunésis or
obeisance to him, thereby recognizing him as his overlord. Pompey co-
operated by bidding the king rise and replacing his diadem. Later
Tigranes was told that he was to retain his inherited kingdom, but that all
his gains since he became king were to pass under Roman control as
lands won by the spear of Rome, with direct reference to the victory of
Lucullus at Tigranocerta. The formulation was the normal phraseology
of the Hellenistic world, avoiding the cruder Roman style of a demand
for deditio, or unconditional surrender.°9

This scene revealed the intentions of Pompey in the Roman ‘Far East’.
He claimed for Rome the sovereign control over all the provinces of
Tigranes’ former empire, but allowed the central kingdom to survive as
a dependent state without any change of dynasty or of the king’s person.
Somewhat later the status of Tigranes was confirmed by recognition as a
‘friend and ally of the Roman people’, but all his conquests were taken
from him. Even Sophene, his first acquisition, was handed over to his
disloyal son, who had guided Pompey and his legions to Artaxata.
Plutarch does not name Mesopotomia, Adiabene or Gordyene in his
somewhat inaccurate list of the provinces that Tigranes lost, saying that
he was to retain what he held ‘down to Pompey’.#° But Lucullus had
occupied Gordyene and the northern district of Mesopotamia, by the
capture of Nisibis, and Pompey acquired control of Iberia, Albania and
Media Atropatene by direct action, which transferred their nominal
allegiance to Rome. Hence Pompey undoubtedly confined Tigranes to
the core of Armenia, and claimed direct suzerainty over the rest of his
empire for Rome. But in the south the Parthian king was already
reclaiming his family’s rights in Adiabene and Mesopotamia, which
Pompey eventually for the most part conceded.

3 Plut. Pomp. 33.5, App. Mith. 106, Syr. 49, Dio xxxvt.5 3.2. For the Greek formula see LSJ s.v.
AOPY and compounds. 40 Plut. Pomp. 33.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

254 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

VII. THE END OF MITHRIDATES

After a hazardous journey through the Caucasus, beset by hostile
tribesmen, and across the steppes bordering the sea of Azov, where he
had friends and dependants, Mithridates reached the Crimean Bosporus
some time in the summer of 65 B.c. There he set about restoring his
power, despite the hostility of his family and many of his former subjects,
and prepared to defend himself against the naval forces that Pompey had
stationed at Phasis to control the approaches to the Bosporus. Mithri-
dates garrisoned the mainland port of Phanagorea across the straits of
Taman, and sent forces to hold the Crimean harbours — Chersonesus,
Theodosia and Nymphaion — evidently in expectation of a sea-borne
attack. This rational and modest plan was upset by the revolt of the
harbour garrisons that enabled his son Pharnaces to stage a successful
coup within the army, particularly through the support of the regiment of
Roman deserters. Pharnaces was declared king in 63 B.c. and his father
secured either a voluntary death or assassination — both versions are
given credence — at the hands of a Celtic warrior.

This rational account, related at length with many details by Appian,
displays Mithridates making a shrewd and practical use of his limited
forces to defend the last bastion of his power until the inevitable
counterplot destroyed him. But the story is confused in Appian with a
very different version. In this Mithridates proposed to march with a well-
found army of 36,000 men, organized in sixty regiments, by the coast of
the Black Sea to the Danube delta, and thence to descend upon Italy
through Alpine passes. When the Scythians in the Crimea refused to join
this adventure, he is said to have turned to a mysterious horde of Celts in
a distant land, ‘who had long been his associates for this purpose’. This
story, told at length by Appian, is repeated briefly in sources derived
from Livy with other additions. Plutarch reveals its origin by remarking
that Pompey was criticized for ‘planning to attack the Nabatean Arabs at
the very time that Mithridates, as men said, was about to invade Italy
through the lands of the Scyths and Paionians’. The intrusion of Celts
and Paionians into the story is instructive. Celts were the traditional
enemy of Rome at all periods, latterly involved in the invasion of Gaul
and Italy by Cimbri and Teutones, whom the ancient geographers
regarded as Celtic peoples, and most recently identified with the
persistent attacks of the Scordisci on Roman Macedonia, precisely
through Paionia, in the past generation. This tale about Mithridates and
the invasion of Italy is drawn from the history of rumour, as Plutarch
implies, and was elaborated by the political enemies of Pompey at Rome.
But it was unknown to Cicero when late in the year of Mithridates’ death
he spoke at length, in his defence of the consular election of Murena,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CAUCASIAN CAMPAIGNS 255

about the fear that Mithridates inspired even when driven out of his
kingdom, which was ended only by his death. Cicero’s advocacy of
Murena’s consulship would have been even more effective if he could
have added the hints about the invasion of Italy, evidently not yet
concocted.*#!

VIET. THE CAUCASIAN CAMPAIGNS

After the submission of Tigranes Pompey set about the imposition of
Roman authority upon the peoples of his empire. Legates were des-
patched to the southern regions of Mesopotamia, Gordyene and
Adiabene, but he reserved for himself military action against the more
formidable peoples of Iberia and Albania, who held the regions between
the northern Armenian mountains and the Caucasus massif, where only
the coastal zone of Colchis had been part of the Pontic kingdom. This
was not merely an outburst of personal ambition, or a substitute for the
capture of Mithridates, as many modern and ancient critics have held,
but a deliberate extension of Roman power at the far end of Anatolia.
Instead of wintering his legions in the fertile zone of Artaxata, which has
been reckoned among the candidates for the Garden of Eden, Pompey
marched them northwards through the mountain frontier of Armenia by
the gorges of the upper Cyrus river into the Iberian highlands, and
thence eastwards towards Albanian territory. There they were stationed
in three separate camps on the southern bank of the Cyrus.42

The Iberians inhabited the highlands between the Caucasus ranges
and the frontier mountains of Armenia. The region is drained by the
Phasis river, flowing westward from the Tiflis area to the Black Sea, and
by the middle sector of the Cyrus, which rises in northern Armenia and
breaks through gorges to enter the Iberian highlands, whence it flows
eastwards to pass through the Albanian lowlands to the Caspian Sea. The
Iberians were a relatively civilized people with an agricultural economy,
settled villages and townships. Their society was organized in a system
of four functional castes — rulers, military leaders who were also judges,
peasants who provided fighting men, and ‘royal serfs’. The Albanians
were more primitive, primarily a pastoral people with a rudimentary
economy, and much less suited to provision the legions of Pompey than
the Iberians. The core of their fighting men was formidable, armed with
bows or javelins and lightly armoured with breastplates and shields,
though the mass was ill armed and wore skins.

41. The invention in App. Mith. 109, Plut. Pomp. 41.2, and Dio xxxvit.11.1, is defended by Havas
1968 (D 24).

42 App. Mith. 103, alone displaces the Caucasian campaigns, setting them before instead of after
the subjection of Armenia; cf. Plut. Pomp. 34-5, Dio xxxv1.5 3-4, with Vell. Pat. 11.37, Livy Per. c1.

4 Iberi, cf. Strab. x1.3.1-6 (499-501). Albani, cf. ibid. 4.1-6 (501-3), Pliny HN v1.29.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

256 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

The direction of march and the site of the winter camps indicates that
the prime objective of Pompey was to demonstrate Roman power in an
area where no proconsul had ever operated. In his previous military
career he had waged internal wars against the political enemies of a
senatorial faction, and assisted in the last phase of the servile war in Italy,
while his naval warfare against piracy, however well organized, carried
only glory of a secondary sort. In his first foreign war against a great
kingdom the power of the enemy had been substantially weakened by his
predecessor Lucullus. Hence Pompey had good reason to select for his
attention what was reckoned the most formidable element among the
allies and subjects of Tigranes, and to force a conquest that was entirely
his own achievement, but yet served to establish Roman power in the far
east of the Roman world.

During the winter of 66/5 Oroises, the supreme chief of the Albanian
peoples, mustered his forces and crossed the Cyrus river to attack the
Roman encampments in three separate actions. Pompey and his legates
mastered the onslaught and imposed a truce upon the Albanians without
entering their country. In the following spring he moved westwards into
Iberian territory. While negotiating with the Iberian king Artoces,
Pompey is said to have found that he was preparing for war — as he well
might — and struck the first blow. Vigorous fighting ended with a
Roman victory in the highlands of central Iberia, when Artoces failed to
hold the crossing of the Pelorus river. Pompey made a formal peace,
guaranteed by the surrender of the king’s sons as hostages, and marched
down the Phasis valley into the coastal zone of Colchis, where there was
no serious resistance. At the port of Phasis he was met by his naval legate
Servilius, who had reached there with a detachment of the Roman fleet.

Belatedly Pompey now considered and dismissed the possibility of
pursuing Mithridates either by land through the Caucasian mountains or
by sea to the Crimean Bosporus. Leaving Servilius to control the sea
routes he marched his army back to Armenia. His failure to eliminate
Mithridates was much criticized at Rome, where his supporters in 63
maintained that the Bosporus was beyond the reach of a Roman army.
The historical tradition that represents Livy unites in regarding the
march through Iberia as aimed at the pursuit of Mithridates, which was
unfortunately impeded by the resistance of the Iberians and Albanians.*4
This evidently echoes the defence that Pompey concocted when it was
learned that Mithridates had escaped to the Crimea and was preparing to
defend himself again. Pompey underestimated the relentless vigour and
resources of the aged king, as is revealed by his incautious remark that he
had left a worse enemy than a Roman army to deal with him — hunger.

“4 Defence of Pompey, cf. Cic. Mur. 34, Plut. Pomp. 34.1, 35.1, Dio xxxvit.3.1-3, Livy Per. ct.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CAUCASIAN CAMPAIGNS 257

For Mithridates was in one of the principal granaries of the Greek
world.‘5

Pompey next led his army through the whole length of Armenia to
open a campaign against the Albanian people, whom he had defeated in
border warfare in the previous winter but not subdued. Since he did not
disturb the peace of Iberia he probably took the direct route northward
from Artaxata by Lake Sevan to the Albanian frontier. He certainly
entered Albania through the barren district of Cambysene, the border
land between Armenia, Iberia and Albania.*6 Thence he marched into
the heart of the country until in the intense heat of late summer at the
crossing of the Abas river he met the main forces of Oroises, reputed to
number 60,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry. He awaited their attack with
his infantry immobile, and inflicted a crushing defeat. Victory was
followed by the grant of peace and the submission of adjacent peoples.
Pompey continued his march southwards through a harsh and barren
land towards the Caspian coast, but withdrew when faced by intolerable
physical conditions at three days’ march from the sea. This was the
pattern of conquest that Caesar followed later in his first years in Gaul,
where his spectacular victories in major battles were followed by the
general submission of large groups of peoples without a systematic
reduction of their lands.

By the end of 65 Pompey had returned to bases in Lesser Armenia and
Pontus. His Caucasian campaigns, the last of his active warfare in the
East, apart from local operations in Syria and Judaea in 63, are the only
major military actions in which he advanced beyond the scope of his
predecessor Lucullus. Since in his first campaign he began operations in
Pontus far to the east of the area in which Lucullus had defeated
Mithridates, it is not surprising that he reached the eastern limits of the
Armenian empire, and in Albania advanced somewhat further. These
campaigns gained Rome valuable support in the East. Twenty years later
the Iberians quickly yielded toa legate of Antonius, and afterwards in the
first century of the imperial period they regularly assisted in the defence
of the Armenian area against the Parthians.

Pompey showed a certain interest in the trade routes described by
ancient geographers that linked the trading stations at the eastern end of
the Black Sea with the far-eastern caravan routes through eastern Iran
and Bactria to India. The main route led from Phasis city by the Phasis
and Cyrus valleys across the Caspian sea to the Hyrcanian coast, where it
linked with the route from Syria and Babylonia through Iran to Bactria.
Pompey secured information about the route and the transit of ‘Indian
goods’, and doubtless marched along a sector of the highway through
Iberia to Colchis, where Strabo describes it as a paved road for a four

45 Plut. Pomp. 39.1. 4 Route, cf. Plut. Pomp. 35.2-3, Dio xxxvit.3.3-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

258 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

days’ journey between the upper Phasis and the Cyrus valleys. There is
no reason to doubt that this route, first mentioned by Herodotus, was
active at this time for the transport of oriental wares to the dynasts of
Colchis and the Crimean area together with another route to the north of
the Caucasus, operated profitably by the Aorsi in the fifties and forties’
B.c.4” But there is no reason to connect the mention of this trade with the
economic interests of the magnates of the Roman business world. Their
activities were confined at this time to easily accessible areas — tax-
collection and money-lending in the settled provinces and subordinate
kingdoms of the pacified Roman world, and the wholesale trade in slaves
through Asia by the mart of Delos to the Roman market. The numerous
men of affairs for whom Cicero wrote his letters of recommendation to
proconsuls in the next twenty years were mostly confined in their scope
to the older provinces of Asia, Macedonia and Achaea. A few reached
Bithynia, none travelled further.8

IX. THE ORGANIZATION OF GAINS AND THE ANNEXATION OF
SYRIA

Little is known about the activites of Pompey between the end of the
Albanian campaign in the autumn of 6; and his arrival in northern Syria
late in 64. There is no report of any military action apart from the capture
of certain isolated fortresses. The winter was spent in Aspis, an
unidentified site in Lesser Armenia. Much time was taken in checking
the contents of the numerous treasure-houses of Mithridates, notably
that at Talaura, where thirty days were spent on the count. In all Pompey
collected no less than 36,000 talents in gold and silver, mostly in coined
money at 6,000 drachmae toa talent. All had to be counted and registered
in their lists by the proconsular scribae. The quaestors of Pompey were in
charge of the audit, and since such vast sums were at stake Pompey, who
prided himself upon his honesty in public finances, must have made
some check upon the accounts, for which he was _ ultimately
responsible.*?

The main task of this year was the reorganization of Pontus as a
province and the appointment or renewal of tenure of kings and princes
in the numerous subordinate kingdoms that Pompey recognized or re-
established in Anatolia. But these were not tasks on which proconsuls
spent a great deal of time, if one may judge by the settlement of Anatolia
after the defeat of Antiochus III in 189, or the pacification of Asia by

47 Trade and routes, cf. Strab. 1.1.15 (73), XI-2.17 (498), 3-5 (500), 7.3 ($09), with Pliny HN v1.52
and Hd. 1.104.1, 110.2, 1v.37.1. Aorsi route Strab. x1.5.8 (506).

48 CE. Cic. Fan. ximt passim: Philomelium sbid. 43-5, Bithynia, sbid. Gr.

49 The chronology of Dio xxxvit.7.5 has been misunderstood as placing ‘Aspis’ near the
Albanian border. Treasure-houses, App. Mith. 107, 115, Dio xxxvut.7.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ANNEXATION OF SYRIA 259

Sulla in 85, who left the detailed work to his legates. More time may
have been required by the initiation of the scheme for the creation or
enlargement of eleven Greek cities charged with the internal administ-
ration of the core of Pontus. But how much of the municipal detail was
devised or set on foot personally by Pompey is unknown. In the course
of the year Pompey was also occupied with negotiations with the
Parthian king: a mission was received and letters were despatched. The
legates likewise were no longer occupied with warfare: their operations
in Adiabene and Mesopotamia were completed by the winter or spring
of 64. Hence it was being said at Rome, as Plutarch records, that Pompey
was ‘ordering provinces and handing out gifts while the enemy —
Mithridates ~ was still active and uncaptured’.5°

Late in 64 Pompey moved southwards through Cappadocia and
Cilicia into northern Syria. There was no organized resistance except
possibly in Commagene, the mountainous principality wedged between
the Taurus watershed, Cappadocia and the Syrian foothills. Its ruler
Antiochus had made himself an independent king after the end of
Seleucid power, and as the enemy of Tigranes had opened negotiations
with Lucullus. He now yielded to Pompey who recognized his kingship
and awarded him an extension of territory into western Mesopotamia.>!

Pompey had already decided to annex northern Syria as a Roman
province before he met Antiochus Philadelphos at Antioch, late in 64.
This prince, whose claim to the kingship of Egypt had been vainly
advanced at Rome by his mother Selene before 70, had secured the
Seleucid succession at Antioch after the withdrawal of the Armenian
forces from Syria in 69-68, and held it for a year, though at variance with
his kinsman Philip, who maintained himself in lowland Cilicia. Both
princes turned for help to Arab dynasts, Sampsiceramus of Emesa and
one Zizos, who plotted to murder their protégés and to seize the
kingdom. The plots failed, and Philip secured the support of Marcius
Rex, proconsul of Syria in 67, who sent P. Clodius to assist him at
Antioch. His rival Antiochus meanwhile had escaped from the hands of
Sampsiceramus. When Pompey reached Antioch in 64 it was Antiochus,
not Philip, who came to claim the Seleucid throne. But he did not satisfy
Pompey, who is reported as saying that he could not grant the diadem to
a man who could not keep his kingdom and was unwelcome to his
subjects, and added that he would not allow Syria to fall to the despoiling
raids of Arabs and Jews.5? This is a clear reference to the activities of such
men as Sampsiceramus, Aretas of Petra, the overlord of Nabatene
beyond Jordan, and the brigand Cynaras, who held much of the

50 Plut. Pomp. 38.2; cities, below, pp. 266-8.
51 Commagene, cf. App. Mith. 106, 117, Plut. Pomp. 45.5.
52 Cf. Just. Epit. xt.2.3-4; Cic. um. Verr. 4.61.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

260 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

Phoenician coast from Byblos to Berytus until Pompey dispossessed
him, while the Hasmonean princes of Judaea had acquired many Greek
settlements in southern Syria. The collapse of the Seleucid power had
sown disorder among the rival dynasts of an area that had no internal
unity of race or culture.

There was no general resistance to Pompey in Syria, which he annexed
for the same reason that had led to the provincialization of Asia and
Bithynia, the lack of any effective and trustworthy ruler who could
manage the whole country in the interest of Rome. It has been widely
held that Pompey annexed Syria mainly to eliminate piracy from the
Levantine coast. But piracy was anathema to the trading states of Syria,
which are described by Strabo in his account of the age of piracy as
hemmed in by the hostile powers of Egypt, Cyprus and even Rhodes,
that refused them help against the menace of pirates. Only a single nest of
pirates is named along the Syrian coast, south of Phoenicia, at Joppa.
Brigandage, which was prevalent in Syria, was a land-based activity,
operated from mountain fastnesses against the coastal cities or by the
desert nomads, such as Zenodorus, who somewhat later raided the
caravans of Damascus. Pompey destroyed the strongholds of Syrian
brigandage, but he left Cyprus, a home of pirates in the recent past, in the
hands of its ruler Ptolemy brother of the Egyptian king, Auletes (ch. 8¢,
P- 319).°

Another factor in the annexation of Syria, sometimes suggested as the
principal reason, was the possibility of a renewal of the Parthian interest
shown by Mithridates Megas and his predecessors, who had attempted
the conquest of Seleucid Syria. Parthia, it is true, did not yet appear to
offer any threat to Roman supremacy. But the existence of an organized
military state beyond the middle Euphrates, even if reckoned a second-
class power at this time was doubtless among the factors that led Pompey
to annex Syria and to establish some four legions in Cilicia and northern
Syria. If the Romans left Syria to itself the Parthians were likely to
intervene just as Tigranes had done.54

XI. POMPEY IN JUDAEA AND NABATENE

The first intention of Pompey in southern Syria was to deal with the
aggressive king Aretas of Nabatene. However, he was approached by
emissaries from the rival claimants to the high priesthood and kingship
of Judaea, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. Aretas had extended his power
northward through Transjordania to the neighbourhood of Damascus,
which he held for some years, and recently he had intervened in Judaea

53 Pirates, ef. Strab. xIVv.5.2 (669), XVI.2. 28 (759). Brigands. sbid. xvi.2.8 (751), 18 (755), 20 (756),
37 (761). 4 Parthia, see below pp. 262-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

JUDAEA AND NABATENE 261

on the side of Hyrcanus. His power threatened the peace of Syria, while
the feud between the Judean princes was an internal affair that had raged
intermittently since the death of the regent Alexandra in 69. Before the
arrival of Pompey the legate Aemilius Scaurus had gone to Syria in 64,
apparently without any armed forces, to investigate the situation. He
met representatives of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus in Judaea at the time
when Hyrcanus had the advantage through the military support of
Aretas. Scaurus not surprisingly favoured Aristobulus, and required
Aretas to withdraw from Judaea.

By the time that Pompey had reached Antioch in the autumn of 64
Aristobulus had the upper hand in Judaea and Aretas had retired to
Philadelphia in Transjordan. Pompey required both parties to await a
settlement after his proposed expedition against Aretas. But when he
learned early in 63 that Aristobulus had upset the situation by mobilizing
forces at Alexandrion, a fortress that dominated the road from Damascus
to Jerusalem, he promptly marched instead against Aristobulus and
confronted him.55 After fruitless parleys Aristobulus withdrew to
Jerusalem, where he renewed his evasive negotiations. Pompey lost
patience and managed to capture the recalcitrant prince outside the city.
The partisans of Hyrcanus opened the gates to Pompey, but the
numerous priesthood, with the supporters of Aristobulus, held the
strongly fortified temple area against the invader for a siege of three
months’ duration. The final storming was simplified by exploitation of
the inactivity of the defenders on the Sabbath days, which enabled the
Romans to complete the machinery of assault and to take the stronghold
on the Day of Atonement towards the beginning of October.5° The
fighting, though claimed as the conquest of Judaea by Roman sources,
was limited to the fortress in Jerusalem. After its capture Pompey treated
Judaea no differently from other subject principalities. He established
Hyrcanus as high priest and ethnarch rather than king of Judaea, to the
satisfaction of the numerous Jews, particularly amongst the clergy, who
objected to the secular kingship. The man was more likely to make a
pliant ruler than the unreliable Aristobulus, who was despatched as a
prisoner to Rome.

The Hellenized territories in the north and the coastal settlements
such as Gaza and Joppa that the Maccabean kings had taken from
Seleucid control were returned to the Syrian province. Judaea was
confined to the lands of the Jewish people. Pompey did not renew his
interrupted campaign against Aretas. News of the death of Mithridates

55 The prime source is Joseph. AJ x1v.2 (29)-4 (79), BJ 1.6.2-7 (127-57). Little of use is added by
Dio xxxvit.16-16.1 and Plut. Pomp. 39.3.

56 Joseph. Aj. xiv.q.3 (64-6), confirmed by Strab. xv1.2.40 (763); against the confusion of Dio
XXXVIL.16.2~—q. Cf. Schiirer 1973-87 (D 153) 12.239 n. 23.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

262 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

in the Crimean Bosporus, received before he reached Jerusalem, drew
him back to Amisus in Pontus, when the siege ended, to settle affairs with
Pharnaces, who took over the power of the king. Aretas was left to
Aemilius Scaurus, whom Pompey placed in charge of Syria. Scaurus
raided Nabatean territory but did not take Petra or defeat the main forces
of Aretas, who madea nominal submission and paid a fine or bribe of 300
talents to Scaurus. But the kingdom survived in diminishing indepen-
dence until the time of the emperor Trajan.

XI. PARTHIA AND ROME

It has been widely held that the Parthians, the paramount power that
displaced the Seleucids in the Orient, had no western ambitions before
the defeat of M. Crassus in 53. But Parthian enterprise in the West began
in the time of Mithridates I, who after the defeat of the Seleucid king
Demetrius II Nicator in Media, in 130-129 B.c., retained him as a
diplomatic prisoner with the intention of restoring him to the throne at
Antioch as a Parthian vassal. Ten years later Mithridates’ successor
Phraates I after defeating the invasion of Antiochus Sidetes planned a
counter-attack on Syria that was forestalled when eastern Iran was
invaded by a horde from Sacastan. Mithridates II Megas revived these
plans by subduing the dependent ruler of the north Syrian Galilei, who
owed fealty to Antiochus Eusebes, about 93-92 B.c., and somewhat later
defeated the last effective Seleucid king, Demetrius III, at Beroia in
northern Syria, in support of his rival Philip.

While Mithridates was preparing his plans against Syria the incident
occurred on the Cappadocian frontier that introduced the Parthians to
the existence of the Roman power. The propraetor Sulla, after expelling
from Cappadocia the Armenian forces that had resisted the restoration of
Ariobarzanes to the kingdom, encountered the Parthian envoy Oroba-
zus and held a tripartite discussion with Ariobarzanes and the Parthian
about the possibility of friendship and alliance between Rome and
Parthia. Or so Sulla reported. This has been taken to mean the actual
establishment of a treaty relationship between the two powers. But such
arrangements at this date, and later, required the sanction of the Senate
or the Senate and People of Rome, as Sulla was well aware. When in
Numidia in 105, he had duly forwarded the request of the Mauretanian
king for a treaty with Rome through his proconsul to the Senate.57 No
proposals were now referred to Rome, and the Parthian king ordered the
execution of Orobazus for lowering the dignity of himself by dealing
with a barbarian on equal terms.

After 90 B.c. the Parthian power was diminished by dynastic feuds

57 Cf. Plut. Sulla, 5.8-9, with Sall. Iug. 104.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PARTHIA AND ROME 263

that enabled the king of Armenia, Tigranes, to establish his indepen-
dence and, as has been seen, to take control of the Parthian territories
between Babylonia and southern Armenia, with Media Atropatene in
the north-east, and to annex northern Syria and coastal Cilicia in the
south-west. The rise of Tigranes coincided with the collapse of Roman
power in Anatolia in the eighties and the renewed challenge of
Mithridates Eupator in the later seventies. Contact between Rome and
Parthia was restored when Lucullus invaded southern Armenia. After
his victory at Tigranocerta he opened lengthy negotiations with the
recently established king, Phraates III. But the king came to distrust the
Roman envoys and no definitive agreement was made.58

When Pompey took charge of the war in the East he immediately
reopened negotiations with Phraates, offering the same terms as
Tigranes and Mithridates Eupator, who were still seeking Parthian aid.
This presumably meant the transfer of the three regions of Adiabene,
Mesopotamia and Gordyene, which are later mentioned as what
Phraates regained, or expected to gain, in return for his invasion of
Armenia. After some hesitation Phraates carried out his agreement,
urged on by the disloyal son of Tigranes, who hoped to oust his father, in
the summer of 66. He invaded northern Armenia by the Araxes valley
and besieged Tigranes in Artaxata. Tigranes managed to vacate the city
with his main forces and the siege was unsuccessful, but Phraates had
prevented Tigranes from giving any help to Mithridates in Pontus. By
the end of 65 Phraates had occupied Adiabene and Gordyene, when he
was alarmed by the report of the advance of the legate Gabinius, who had
marched by the route of Lucullus to recover southern Armenia and
might threaten Mesopotamia, which Phraates had not yet occupied. The
king promptly sought the ‘renewal and confirmation’ of his agreement.
Pompey retaliated by demanding the surrender of Gordyene. When
Phraates objected he sent a second legate, Afranius, to seize the region
and to install Tigranes as its ruler. The Parthians departed without
resistance, and Afranius pursued them beyond the Tigris into Adiabene
as far as Arbela. Thence in the winter of 65 he withdrew his forces
through the dry steppes of Mesopotamia, where he suffered difficulties
with supplies that were solved by the semi-Greek city of Carrhae, before
he reached northern Syria.

Cassius Dio states that the operations of Afranius were contrary to the
agreement with Phraates, who sent a second mission to Pompey,
demanding that the Euphrates should form the boundary between the
two powers.5? This was the first time that the issue of the Euphrates

58 See pp. 241-2 above. Fora fuller account see Cambridge History of Iran 11.1 (Cambridge, 1983).
59 Afranius in Gordyene, Adiabene, Mesopotamia, cf. Plut. Pomp. 36.2, Dio xxxvit.s.2—5.
Second Parthian mission, cf. Plut. Pomp. 33.8, Dio xxxvu1.6.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

264 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

boundary arose between Rome and Parthia. There is a vague statement
in the late Epitomator Orosius that Licinius Crassus invaded Mesopo-
tamia ‘contrary to the terms accepted by Lucullus and Pompey’, but,
since Mesopotamia was held by Armenia down to 65, and no Roman
forces entered northern Syria until 64, there was no earlier opportunity
for a conflict over the Euphrates frontier. When Pompey replied
evasively that he would reckon as the Roman frontier ‘whatever was
right’, and withheld the title of King of Kings from Phraates, the king
sought redress by attacking Tigranes in southern Armenia in the
summer of 64. The conflict with Tigranes ended in a stalemate, and left
Pompey with an excuse for making war on Phraates in defence of
Tigranes, who had recently been recognized as a ‘friend and ally’ of
Rome. Pompey eventually rejected the notion, which was encouraged by
his staff, with the remark that he had no formal commission to fight the
Parthians. He solved the crisis that he had created by an offer of
arbitration between the two kings over Gordyene which they accepted.
Three nameless Romans, despatched from Syria in 64~63, settled the
issue in favour of Tigranes. While the Armenian regained Gordyene,
Phraates retained Mesopotamia, except for the western district of
Osrhoene, which under its ruler Akbar became a Roman dependency at
this time. So Pompey did not concede the Parthian claim to the
Euphrates frontier, but left Phraates free to assert his control over the
rest of Mesopotamia, which nine years later was Parthian territory when
Crassus invaded it.

There is no contemporary evidence for the intentions of Pompey
towards Parthia. But his refusal to recognize the title of King of Kings
indicates that he meant to weaken the standing of Phraates, and he used
the situation that he had engineered in Gordyene in the same way. Since
Pompey preferred in general to work under the cover of legitimacy it is
unlikely that he seriously considered the invasion of Parthian territory
beyond the lands occupied by Tigranes, without a specific mandate, at a
time when his political enemies in Rome were already criticizing him for
permitting the escape of Mithridates. The Parthians were left to prove
their military effectiveness at the expense of M. Crassus. Their armed
strength, which the Romans had not yet tested, lay in the combination of
heavily armoured cavalry and mounted archers, a totally different style
from the Roman infantrymen. Pompey took account of them by leaving
a strong force of Roman legions as the garrison of Syria and Cilicia. Two
Syrian legions are documented immediately after the departure of
Pompey by a chance mention in Josephus. The legions of Cilicia do not

© Dispute over Gordyene, cf. Dio xxxvi1.5.3, 6.4-5, 7.3, with Plut. Pomp. 39.5; Strab. x1r.1.24
(747), X1-14.15 (532), confusingly including Gordyene in Mesopotamia, cf. Dio xu.12.2; 13.1~2,
20.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE EASTERN SETTLEMENT 265

appear until the province became a consular command in 57-56. But
Cilicia contained many independent peoples in the highlands that no
Roman had yet subdued (as Cicero later found) and could not dispense
with a garrison. The two discontented legions that were on the verge of
mutiny when Cicero arrived in 52, despite the demobilization of time-
served men by his predecessor, had been in Cilicia for many years. Four
legions in Cilicia and Syria could deal with any trouble that the Parthians
were likely to create on their present form, and maintain order within the
provincial area.

XII. THE EASTERN SETTLEMENT OF POMPEY

1. Military Control

From the arrangements that Pompey made for the control of eastern
Anatolia it is clear that military defence was not in the forefront of his
mind. The frontier regions of Anatolia remained in the hands of
politically reliable dynasts. The long-suffering Ariobarzanes was rein-
stated once more in Cappadocia. His territory was extended to include
the region of Cybistra in eastern Lycaonia, through which passed the
essential highway from Apamea in Phrygia through the Cilician Gates in
the Taurus range to the Cilician coast and to Syria. Likewise Tomisa, the
Euphrates bridgehead between Melitene and Sophene, was restored to
him. The Cappadocian king was thus in nominal control of the two
routes linking the Roman power with the new zone of influence in
southern Armenia and Mesopotamia. South of Cappadocia the Euph-
rates crossing at Samosata was left under the control of Antiochus,
whose dynasty continued to rule the mountainous principality of
Commagene, which lies between southern Cappadocia and the Euph-
rates gorges. The king was given additional territory east of the river
that secured his hold on the crossing. The western approaches to
northern Armenia lay through Lesser Armenia and the adjacent moun-
tains largely inhabited by the ferocious Tibareni, who had given trouble
to both Lucullus and Pompey. This region through to the Black Sea
coast was entrusted — possibly by stages — to the reliable and effective
Deiotarus, the Galatian tetrarch. In the far north the vigorous Pharnaces
was left in control of the Crimean Bosporus after his elimination of
Mithridates, though he was not allowed to hold Colchis, on the
mainland, where a Roman nominee was installed.

Pompey thus maintained the system of indirect rule in the frontier
zones beyond which lay the kingdom of Armenia, itself reduced to a
calculated dependence, but likely to assert itself if opportunity arose.
Roman military power was confined to the enlarged province of Cilicia,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

266 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

which now included the western sector of the Taurus mountains and the
coastal plain beyond, terminating at the Amanus chain that separates
Cilicia from Syria. Though not a frontier province in the strict sense,
Cilicia was a military zone with a force of some two legions — though
their presence is not testified immediately — stationed in the western
region of north Cilicia. These were a mobile force, to be used as Cicero
used them in 5 2-51 B.c., for the repression of rebellious or unconquered
peoples of upper Cilicia, and when occasion arose for the defence of the
whole region against any external threat from Armenia or Parthia. As for
the eastern sector of the combined province of Bithynia and Pontus,
there is no evidence that whatever forces were assigned to it — which
earned their praetorian proconsul the title of ‘mperator in ¢. 57 —
amounted to a substantial group. In Syria the northern territory was
separated from immediate contact with Parthian commanders not only
by the Euphrates river but by the principality of Osrhoene beyond the
river in western Mesopotamia, which preferred Roman to Parthian
suzerainty. The two legions testified as the Syrian garrison after the
departure of Pompey were stationed presumably in the neighbourhood
of Antioch, as later, when not engaged in Judaea or Nabatene in the
south.®

2. Internal government

In Anatolia Pompey extended direct provincial government only to the
Cilician plain, which was added to the province, and to central and
western Pontus, which he combined with Bithynia. The two regions
were very different. Coastal Cilicia was a land of Hellenistic cities which
had suffered greatly through the depredations of the pirate fleets in their
heyday, and by the actions of Tigranes, who had removed the popula-
tions of ‘twelve Hellenic cities’, mostly in the Cilician zone, to establish
his new metropolis at Tigranocerta and to strengthen other settlements
in that region. Pompey enlarged the achievement of Lucullus, who paid
for the return of these peoples to their native cities, by the resettlement of
‘vacant cities and empty lands’ in the plain of coastal Cilicia with the
numerous former citizens who had been driven to enlist in the pirate
fleets by the badness of the times. Appian specifies Mallus, Adana and
Epiphania on this account, in addition to Soli, about which Strabo
enlarges, and Dyme in Achaea: some 20,000 survivors were thus
settled.%

In Bithynia the Hellenic cities were numerous, being either ancient
settlements or creations of the kings, though they had been largely
reduced to townships by the encroachment of the royal domains on their

61 Legions, cf. Joseph. AJ xtv.4.5 (79), 5.2 (84), 6.2 (98).
62 Settlements, cf. Strab. x1v.3.3 (665), 5.8 (671), App. Mith. 96, 115.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE EASTERN SETTLEMENT 267

former civic territories. Pompey restored to them the control of districts
of adjacent territory as municipal land, and refurbished their internal
government by the same system that he introduced into Pontus. Only
three old Hellenic cities existed in Pontus, situated in the coastal region:
Amastris, Amisus and Sinope, which had become the royal capital. In the
townships of the interior there were a number of great Hellenized
families, of which the best known is that of Strabo of Amasia, the
geographical writer, which provided Mithridates with a number of civil
administrators and military leaders. But the mass of the population lived
in villages and townships according to the Iranian and pre-Iranian
life-pattern.

The territory was administered under Mithridates by a system of
district governorships or ‘eparchies’. It was necessary for Pompey to
replace these by a method of decentralized civic government with which
the Romans were familiar. He promoted eight of the larger townships
together with the existing Greek cities, widely distributed through the
land, to the status of self-governing municipalities with a Hellenic style
of internal government. Most of the land of central and western Pontus
became the civic territory of the eleven cities, which each received
control of several of the former eparchies. So much appears from
Strabo’s incomplete account of the arrangements of Pompey. Thus
Amisus and Amasia each received four or five eparchies, Zela secured
‘many’, and Megalopolis gained the extensive districts of Colopene and
Cimiane adjacent to Armenia Minor and Cappadocia.

How the cities were related to their terrains and to the rural
population is not clear. There was possibly a franchise limited to the city
dwellers and to magisterial families, while the bulk of the population was
excluded from civil or civic rights. The reorganization of Pontus was
based on the principle, familiar from the provincial system of Macedonia
and Asia, that proconsular administration depended on a substratum of
local self-government. The sole exception proves the rule: the temple-
state of Comana was granted to the favoured Archelaus, son of
Mithridates’ general, with a great extension of territory, to rule as a
dynast. Strabo writes of Zela, one of the eleven cities, that ‘Pompey
assigned many eparchies to it and called it a city ’: this was not a process
of colonization in the old Greek sense, with the establishment of a body
of settlers in a new township, but a reorganization of the existing
population into a new system.** Pompey founded a genuinely colonial
settlement only at Nicopolis in Lesser Armenia, where he established a
community of ex-soldiery and native elements.

The method of civic administration introduced by Pompey is partly
revealed by certain citations of the content of the Lex Pompeia

6 Cf. Strab. xit.3.1 (541). Comana, cf. Strab. x11.3.34 (558). Zela, cf. ibid. 37 (560).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

268 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

‘concerning the cities of Bithynia and Pontus’ in the letters of Pliny the
Younger, imperial legate to the emperor Trajan, written about a.p. 110—
11.6 These, together with civic inscriptions from imperial times, prove
that the pattern of government was basically Hellenic, with the normal
machinery of elected annual magistrates, civic councils and voting
assemblies of citizens. But the democratic system normal in the Hellenis-
tic world was characteristically modified by the conversion of the city
councils from annually elected bodies to permanent corporations com-
posed of aldermen. These were nominated by censors, modelled on the
Roman quinquennial pattern, who picked the councillors from the ex-
magistrates and other members of the upper classes, defined by age and
wealth, and expelled unsuitable persons. These methods turned the
councils into local senates that represented the predominance of wealth.
Their composition was controlled only by the civic censors, drawn from
the same social class, and the efficacy of the censorship was limited also
by the rarity of the office. The oligarchical councils doubtless rapidly
acquired the ascendancy over the popular assemblies that they held in the
time of Trajan, because the initiative in the presentation of proposals lay
with the councillors. The size of the councils remains unknown, though
the proposal for the increase of the council of Prusa in Bithynia by a
hundred members, made in ¢. A.D. 97, suggest that as elsewhere in the
Hellenized provinces the councils of Bithynia might number several
hundred persons. But whether the Hellenized classes in Pontus were so
numerous remains uncertain.%

Cappadocia, to which Ariobarzanes was restored, was a land of
oriental civilization in which the notables expected kingly government,
and had demanded its restoration at the beginning of Ariobarzanes’
career, when the Senate was minded to abolish it. The administration
was divided between twelve ‘generalships’ on the pattern of Seleucid
bureaucracy. Hellenism, introduced by Ariarathes Eusebes in the second
century B.C., did not greatly flourish. Mazaca, the royal capital and the
base of the royal army, had some form of internal government based on
the Greek pattern and derived (it was said) from the code of the early law-
giver Charondas of Catane. There were a few townships called politeu-
mata, which normally in Hellenistic usage refers to local settlements of
privileged foreigners. Anisa, one of these, had internal self-government
on the Greek pattern, but no territory outside the township. Otherwise
strongholds prevailed, and temple-towns that acted as market centres.
Hence Cappadocia continued to be ruled by kings even after the rise of

6 Pliny Ep. x.43.1, 75-80, 110.1, 112-13.

& Initiative of Councils, cf. Pliny Ep. x.39.5, 81.1, 6, 110.1. Increase at Prusa, cf. Dio Chrys. Or.
xLv.7. Cappadocia, see Strabo x11.1.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE EASTERN SETTLEMENT 269

Parthian power increased its strategic importance in relation to Armenia,
down to the time of Tiberius Caesar.

Though the whole of the Cilician region became a Roman province,
dynastic rule was recognized in districts such as troublesome Isauria,
where Antipater of Derbe had extensive power. Likewise Tarcondimo-
tus gradually extended his control of northern Amanus, while the ‘free
Cilicians’ of the southern Amanus were left undisturbed by the provin-
cial regime until the proconsulship of M. Cicero in 52-51 B.c. But in the
Cilician plain the numerous Greek cities, strengthened by restoration
and resettlement, provided for local administration.

Galatia, within the barren zone of central Anatolia, where the three
tribal groups of the Tolistobogii, Tectosagi and Trocmi retained their
traditional Celtic system, though vastly reduced in power, was left to the
rule of the so-called tetrarchs. The most notable was the faithful
Deiotarus, who dominated the Tolistobogii of western Galatia, and
eventually secured from Rome his recognition as king. He was also
given, now or a few years later, the principality of Lesser Armenia,
together with adjacent mountainous territories through to the Black Sea.

Pharnaces, the surviving son of Mithridates Eupator, in return for the
elimination of his father and the surrender of many notable persons, was
recognized as the ruler of the Crimean Bosporus, and as a‘friend and ally’
of Rome, without any known financial exactions. The kingdom of
Armenia, and eventually the principality of Nabatene beyond southern
Syria and Judaea, were treated less favourably. But though they paid
indemnities at their submission, and though southern Armenia was
stripped of stored treasure, they were not required to pay annual tribute.
Further afield peoples such as the Iberi and Albani in the sub-Caucasian
region, who had been defeated in battle, and the Medes of Atropatene,
who had submitted to military pressure, remained in effective
independence.

3. Methods of Taxation

In the past century ‘friends and allies’ of the Roman People had not paid
regular taxes to Rome. There is no evidence that tribute was now exacted
from any of the loyal rulers who were restored or recognized by Pompey
in Anatolia. Cicero, when proconsul of Cilicia, briefly mentions tax-
collectors in his province, and has much to say about certain great
Romans who were extracting the repayment of loans from the Cappado-
cian king, but he never suggests that the king or his subjects paid taxes to
the Roman treasury. Instead, he approved an arrangement of the king’s
own revenues that enabled him to pay his personal debts to Roman

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

270 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

financiers.*7 If the weak kingdom of Cappadocia was not required to pay
tribute it is unlikely that taxation was imposed on the Galatian tetrarchs,
who had shown equal loyalty in the past: later Caesar required a large
sum as a gift, not as arrears of taxation, from his ex-enemy Deiotarus.
But the principalities carved out of the kingdom of Pontus were
another matter. It is likely that they were treated like the minor dynasts
in the Syrian region, who were certainly required to pay tribute. It
is probable that in these territories tribute was paid in a lump sum
directly to the authorities of the nearest province, Cilicia, Syria or
Pontus. The proconsul of Syria a few years later arranged the collection
of taxes from Syrian dynasts, under the arrangements of Pompey, and
from Judaea, where he initiated the system, to the exclusion of the
Roman financiers.

Roman pablicani managed the collection of the land and pasture dues,
which were the principal Roman impost, from the civic communities of
each provincial area. But Pompey modified the system in certain ways to
the benefit of tax-payers. In Asia the former method continued by which
the tax-right was leased by the consuls or censors at Rome to organized
groups or societates of Roman businessmen, who thereby secured a
monopoly of the system. Something similar is indicated for the Bithy-
nian sector of the new province of Bithynia and Pontus, because in 51-50
B.C. a single composite group of pablicani administered the collection of
the whole of Bithynia.® But the taxation leases of the reorganized or
newly organized provinces of Cilicia and Syria were let by the proconsuls
of the provinces to publicani at an auction within their provinces, not
apparently in a single block but commune by commune. Though the
collection remained in Roman hands the communes ceased to be the
monopoly of a single group of publicani. A second change was in the
method of collection. Instead of direct collection from producers at
vintage or harvest the system of pactiones, already used as an alternative
method in some districts of Asia, was made universal. By this the civic
authorities were enabled to make an agreement or pactio with the
publicani for the payment of a fixed sum by the whole community, which
they then collected from their citizens by their own agents. Thus a
system of local collection was interposed between the publicani and the
individual tax-payers. Cicero briefly remarked that ‘the tax agreements
have been completed’ before he even set foot in his province: henceforth
he was able to concentrate on the control of the excesses of the great
money-lenders in their dealings with provincial cities.”

67 Cic. Att. v1.1.3. S8Cf. below, p. 273.

6 Cf. Cic. Fan. xiit.9.2 for Bithynian societas.

7 So much may be gathered from Cic. Prov. Cons. 9-10 for Syria, and from Avs. v.14.1 for Cilicia.
On publicani in general see Brunt 1990 (A 20) ch. 13.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GABINIUS 271

XIII. GABINIUS AND THE AFTERMATH OF POMPEY

The situation around Syria remained quiescent for a few years after the
departure of Pompey, though trouble persisted with the Nabatean
Arabs. Aulus Gabinius, the former legate of Pompey in the Mesopota-
mian area, arrived in 57, after his consulship, with a military command
on the pattern of the Lex Manilia. A tribunician bill gave him several
legions and a considerable sum of money, though neither is precisely
described, for a period of three years, and authority to deal with adjacent
makers of trouble. But though Cicero talks of Babylon and Persia being
subject to his exactions it is clear that he lacked the extensive powers
given by the Lex Manilia to Pompey.”! Affairs in Parthia, with which at
this time the ill-defined agreement with Pompey survived, gave an
excuse for indirect intervention. After the murder of the king Phraates
his sons Mithridates and Orodes quarrelled about the succession.
Eventually Mithridates, expelled from the viceroyalty of Great Media by
his brother, who held the kingship, turned to Gabinius, who initiated a
pattern of intervention that had a long history in the imperial period.
Lengthy intrigue was required to secure internal support in Parthia, so
that the plot was not set up until the first months of 55, when Gabinius
entered Mesopotamia across the Euphrates. But the unexpected oppor-
tunity of intervention in wealthy Egypt caused his sudden withdrawal.72

Ptolemy Auletes, the bastard son of Ptolemy Soter, had reigned for
some twenty years of insecurity after the death of his father in 81. Soter’s
unsuccessful rival Alexander I left a will on the basis of which, it has been
argued from obscure evidence, the annexation of Egypt itself was
claimed by the Senate in 87 or 86.73 Some twenty years later M. Crassus as
censor in 65 supported a tribunician bill that probably proposed the
confiscation of the treasures of the Ptolemies ona discreditable pretext.”4
After this scheme was defeated by optimate opposition the resourceful
Caesar, as consul in 59, with the support of Pompey, secured for Auletes
a senatorial decree, confirmed by a law of the people, that recognized
him as the ‘ally and friend’ of Rome, for which he is said to have agreed
the payment of 6,000 talents. But a quarrel with his subjects in
Alexandria forced him to fly to Rome, where in 57 he sought support

1 Powers of Gabinius: Cic. Sest. 24, Dom. 23, 55, Pis. 49. Length of command, ibid. Prov. Cons. 17,
Pis. 55, 88, with Asc. 1-2C; Dio xxxrx.60.q. Territorial limits, Cic. Dom. 23, Rab. Post. 20, Pis. 49,
Strab. x11.3.34 (558), against Cicero’s exaggeration in Dom. 60 —‘alteri Syriam Babylonem Persas .. .
tradidisses’.

72 Mesopotamian incursion: Joseph. Aj xtv.6.2 (98), BJ 1.8.7 (175-6), App. Syr. 51, Dio
XXXIX.56.3, with Cic. Aff. 1v.10.1, fix the date,

73 The will of Alexander: see Cic. Leg. Agr. 1.1, 2.41, Reg. Alex. fr.5, as elucidated by Badian 1967
(D 169). For an alternative view Braund 1983 (A 13) 24-8.

™ Cic. Reg. Alex. fr. 6.6, suggesting the exaction of concessions through threats, is to be set
against the proposal for direct subjugation in Plut. Crass. 13.2, Suet. Iw/. 11.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

272 8a. LUCULLUS, POMPEY AND THE EAST

for his restoration against the counter-claims of Alexandria in the name
of his elder daughter Berenice. The consul Lentulus Spinther, then an
associate of Pompey, secured a senatorial decree authorizing the resto-
ration of Auletes by himself as proconsul of Cilicia in the following year.
But the authority was disputed at Rome early in 56 by the henchmen of
Pompey and Crassus, seeking the transfer of the mission, and by
optimate opponents of both who invoked a Sibylline oracle barring the
use of force. Hence nothing was done, and Auletes left Rome a
disappointed man, unaware that the private reconciliation of Pompey
and Crassus by Caesar at Luca in April 56 had solved his problem: he was
to be restored to the throne of Egypt by the agency of Gabinius as
proconsul of Syria.

The situation was complicated when Archelaus of Comana, until
recently the henchmen of Gabinius, unaware of the compact of Luca,
accepted the invitation of the controllers of Alexandria to marry
Berenice, the nominal queen of Egypt, and to resist the restoration of
Auletes. In the spring of 55 Auletes reached Syria with a letter from
Pompey as consul requiring Gabinius to restore the king to his kingdom.
Gabinius promptly complied. He invaded Egypt, eliminated Archelaus
and Berenice, and set up Auletes as king with a small force of Roman
troops as his personal guard. He left the equestrian man of affairs,
Rabirius Postumus, as the financial minister or dioiketes of Egypt, to
secure the repayment of the Roman bankers who had supported Auletes,
and to extract a reward of 10,000 talents for his services. The role of
Pompey is further revealed by a scene in his house in which Rabirius,
before leaving Rome, arranged a financial agreement with the king’s
representatives. Auletes managed to retain his throne, and after him his
daughter Cleopatra ruled Egypt until the aftermath of the battle of
Actium.

Whatever the faults of Gabinius he gave his first and last attention to
the maintenance of order within his province. He did not intervene in
Parthian affairs until the third year of his command. The first two years
were spent in suppressing a revolt in Judaea stirred up by the Macca-
bean prince Alexander, son of the troublesome Aristobulus, now a
prisoner at Rome. Alexander raised a considerable force to reoccupy the
strongholds in eastern Judaea from which Pompey had driven his father.
Hardly had Gabinius marched southward with his legions and defeated
Alexander when Aristobulus escaped from Rome and arrived in Judaea
to renew the rebellion with the same result. These operations marked the
first conquest of the people and territory of Judaea by Roman forces in
widespread fighting, in contrast to the isolated if considerable action of
Pompey at Jerusalem. They revealed the intransigence not only of the
clerical faction at Jerusalem but of the Jewish people against Roman

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

GABINIUS 273

intervention. Gabinius had the backing at first of the supporters of the
high priest Hyrcanus, but the defection of the influential Pitholaus and
his forces to Aristobulus undermined his position in Jewish esteem.
Aristobulus was sent back to Rome, but Alexander remained in Judaea
thanks to his mother’s influence, where he stirred up yet another
unsuccessful rebellion in 55. Gabinius in his last months after his return
from Egypt repressed both this and a hostile movement in Nabatene.

Gabinius had followed up his victories by an attempt at a peaceful
settlement before his Egyptian adventure. The high priest having
proved an ineffectual ruler, unable to control his powerful kinsmen, was
restricted to the religious supervision of Jerusalem. His political role was
transferred to five regional councils, or synhedria, based on townships in
the four principal regions of Judaea — Galilee, Peraea across Jordan,
Idumea in the south, and Judaea proper, which was apparently split
between the councils of Jerusalem and Jericho. Nothing more is known
about them, apart from a general resemblance to the regional federations
in Macedonia, Asia and Achaea, like which they ‘had their civic life’ and
‘were organized as members of the synhedria’. These seem to have
survived as a substratum under the power of Antipater (Hyrcanus’ vizier
and a potent aide to Gabinius) when he later became the effective ruler of
Judaea, after which they disappear from certain record.75

The financial arrangements of Gabinius for his province, which are
known obscurely from the ferocious and allusive attack of his political
enemy Cicero, are of special interest. Gabinius hampered or restricted
the Roman publicani in their activities by rulings at his tribunal and by
administrative action, including the direct collection of taxation by his
own agents in certain cities and principalities. Amongst these was
Judaea, for which Gabinius appears to have established the system of
direct payment to the Roman quaestor at Sidon. Gabinius, like Pompey,
enriched himself at the expense of kings, but aimed at the fair treatment
of the tax-paying provincials. Josephus, the local historian, writes over a
century later that Gabinius ‘departed after performing great and famous
deeds in his government’. But that did not save him from condemnation

by the guaestio repetundarum at Rome, manned largely by the people that
he had offended.”

75 Civic leagues: Joseph. AJ x1v.5.4 (91), BJ 1.8.4-5 (170). Cf. AJ xtv.9.2 (158), BJ 1.10.4 (203).

7% For the innovations of Gabinius in Syrian taxation see Cicero’s hostile version in Prov. Cons.
g.10, with Pis. 41. For Judaean taxation cf. Dio xxx1x.56.6 with Joseph. AJ xtv.10.6 (203).
Comment of Josephus, 4 xtv.6.4 (104).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 84

THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

TESSA RAJAK

I. THE PERIOD

The Roman seizure of Jerusalem in the autumn of 63 B.c. brought to a
close a formative period in Jewish history. The previous century had
seen Judaea’s emergence as a power to be reckoned with in the region of
Palestine, one comparable in extent, even if not quite in distinction, with
the kingdom of David. The impact of this national experience continued
for the Jews through the classical period, and, indeed, far beyond.
From the military leadership of Judas Maccabaeus and his Hasmonean
brothers came, in due course, permanent authority, a dynastic succession
and a monarchy which eventually gained independence. Defensive wars
merged into aggressive ones; there was expansion westwards to occupy
most of the cities of the coast, east to the Jordan, south into Idumaea and
north to Samaria and the Galilee. However, long-term stability was not
secured. Geographical factors alone would always make Palestine
vulnerable. Religion made it volatile; and this period was one of intense
religious activity. Thus, elements within Jewish society found the
hardening authority, the profane habits, the wealth and perhaps the
Hellenizing style of the Hasmoneans wholly unacceptable. The ruling
family itself also fell prey to a war of succession, so, at the time of
Pompey’s annexation of Syria, the door was wide open to a Roman
intervention which had been long in the making. One of the rival
Hasmoneans then remained in control of a reduced Jewish entity, and he
was made subject to Roman taxation and to the Roman order. This was
the political outcome, together with a divided population and substan-
tial discontent. It would be left to the Idumaean Herod, in an inventive
exploitation of the role of client king under Augustus, to reconstruct
what the Hasmoneans had built, in the spirit of his own day and age.
There can be no doubt that the religious and social effects of these
upheavals were lasting. Differing political reactions were reflected in
division within the community and this division bore ample cultural and
religious fruits, however painful it may have been. Already at the time of
the struggle against Antiochus Epiphanes (Antiochus IV) we observe

274

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PERIOD 275

the existence of ideological groupings, with the promoters of Hellenism
on the one hand, and the hasidim (the pious) who attached themselves to
Judas but later left the cause, on the other. While these tendencies, like
later ones, had a manifestly political dimension, disagreements came
increasingly to be expressed in terms of divergent attitudes to the central
interest of Judaism — the Torah and its interpretation. Thus, the status of
the Oral Law, the application of purity regulations, the character of the
Temple cult and the role of the priesthood all became points of
difference. The best-known groups, Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes,
crystallized during our period (even if, as is possible, they originated
somewhat earlier); and they were to be distinctive in Jewish life down to
the destruction of the Temple in a.p. 70. How far this centrifugal pattern
was reflected in a Diaspora which was already large, but of which we
know all too little during these years, it is impossible to tell. The political
circumstances which gave rise to that fragmentation will be the central
concern of this section; the developed religious culture of Second
Temple Judaism is portrayed in the next volume.!

It was a combination of internal forces with external circumstances
that made the growth of the Jewish state possible. The decline in the
strength of the Seleucid kingdom and then the collapse of that kingdom
into continuous power struggles were the obvious background to this
development, presenting the Hasmoneans first with increasingly dis-
tracted masters, and afterwards with the chance to meddle profitably
among warring rivals. Around the turn of the century an Egyptian
revival of interest in the Palestinian coastal region and beyond was
hampered by similar trouble within the Ptolemaic royal line. Also to be
taken as a factor in the rise of the Judaean state was the growing
involvement of Rome in the Near East. That reached an ironical
conclusion when, in 63 B.c., Pompey’s occupation of Jerusalem
announced the end of Judaean independence, very nearly one hundred
years after the Senate had, we are told, first expressed support for Jewish
aspirations in a friendly (if insubstantial) alliance with Judas Macca-
baeus.? All this is plain enough. Without favourable circumstances the
Jewish gains would scarcely have been possible; and, but for the
changing fortunes of the great powers, what was won might have been
retained. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to look only to these
external causes, or to take Seleucid withdrawal as a foregone conclusion.
Decades of military and political enterprise in Judaea were also required,
and the internal dynamic which could fuel that effort is ultimately the

1 Vol. x2, ch. 14d.

2 1 Macc. 8. Just. Epst. 36.1.10 and 3.9 also seem to allude to the treaty. It should be noted chat
Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 70-4, follows the older scepticism as to the historicity of this document
of formal alliance associated with so early a date. But see Gruen 1984 (a 43) app. 2, 745-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

276 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

GALILEE

Ptolemais

Strato’s
Tower

SAMARIA

Shechem

se
MtGerizim®

Pegae

Alexandriume

Modiin
°

Jamniae *Gezer

Azotus *Ekron
Ascalon JUDAEA

Marissa, _ Beth Zur
Anthedon .
*Gaza Adora

IDUMAEA

Land over 1000 metres

9 30km

0 20 miles

10 Judaea

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE SOURCES 277

most interesting part of the story. It has also been quite rightly remarked
that what happened in Palestine had in itself an active role in bringing
about the disintegration of the Seleucid empire, whether by military
challenges (which were real enough), or as a result of political alliances,
or even by example to others. For us what this means is that the relatively
rich evidence for this period in Palestine apart from its intrinsic interest,
is also an important resource for understanding the meaning of the shift
in the East from Seleucid and Ptolemaic to Roman control.

II. THE SOURCES

The special nature of the evidence can be summed up simply by saying
that there exists the rare phenomenon of an ample indigenous literature.
In the first place, the modern interpreter benefits greatly from having
continuous history written from a local perspective, yet under Greek
influence; sometimes there are even two parallel accounts of the same
events.

From our period, we have 1 and z Maccabees (the third and fourth
books are of uncertain date and context). It is true that each is, in its own
way, a highly tendentious work, favouring dynasty and Temple, but the
value of both as coherent, detailed, almost contemporary descriptions
hardly needs underlining. It is 1 Maccabees, composed, it would seem, in
the late second century B.c., which covers the rule of the Hasmonean
high priest Simon (143/2—-135/4 B.C.) taking the story that had begun
with Mattathias down to Simon’s death.3

However, our ordered knowledge of the times comes above all from
the writings of a prolific historian, Flavius Josephus, whose work mixes
Greek reports on major events with fragments of local tradition. His
later, long account, in the Jewish Antiquities, books x111-xv (published in
the 90s A.D.) draws upon a greater variety of Graeco-Roman writers than
an earlier, condensed version which forms part of the introductory first
book of the Jewish War (dating to between a.p. 75 and 79). Josephus
seems to have been ready to exploit all available Jewish material, as is
shown by his interesting paraphrase of the text of the first book of
Maccabees (excluding only the last three chapters for reasons that are not
entirely clear). We should expect no less of a highly educated priest, a

3 For the dating of this work, see Nickelsburg 1981 (D 141) 159 and Momigliano 1980 (p 136).
The formula at 1 Macc. 16:23-4 would seem to imply that John Hyrcanus (died 104 B.c.) was dead at
the time of writing, but this is far from conclusive. Detailed commentaries: Abel 1949 (D 87);
Goldstein 1976 (D 119). 2 Maccabees, a five-volume epitome of an earlier Greek history, while it
does not cover the late Hasmonean period, is itself also a product of it. The first of two carlier letters
contained in its opening chapters (1:1-9), from the Jews of Judaea to the Jews of Egypt, is dated to
188 of the Seleucid era, i.e. 124 B.c.: Attridge in Stone 1984 (D 161) 176-8; Habicht 1976 (p 121). On
this letter, see below, p. 306. For translation and commentary to both books of Maccabees see
Charlesworth 1985 (D 103).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

278 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

man with Hasmonean royal blood, Pharisaic commitment and a political
past in Jerusalem.4 At the same time, the Jewish records had become
somewhat patchy after the end of the biblical period (that of Chronicles,
Ezra and Nehemiah), when prophecy was traditionally regarded as
having come to an end; and Josephus was also willing to take advantage
of what Gentiles had written. His principal continuous informant,
Nicolaus of Damascus, was congenial enough to Josephus: apart from
producing a Universal History in 144 books, and a biography of the
emperor Augustus, Nicolaus had also been Herod’s minister and a
proponent of Jewish rights in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Our
enormous debt to this now largely lost writer for preserving the memory
of the time between the late Hasmoneans and Herod’s death is often
forgotten. Josephus’ contribution was, then, to integrate snippets of the
Histories of Strabo, also now vanished (only the famous Geography
survives), with what he read in Nicolaus.5 He also knew Timagenes,
Augustus’ obstreperous historian, and he cites yet another writer of the
Augustan age, Diodorus Siculus, who had taken his description of the
dealings of Antiochus VII with Jerusalem from an earlier anti-Jewish
source.®

Josephus, as well as narrating events, seeks at the same time to
communicate to Greek readers something of the character of Jewish life
and thought. It is in this spirit that he digresses, on more than one
occasion, to explain the philosophical basis of the three leading Jewish
haireseis (sects), and even those modern scholars who are disturbed by the
extent to which Greek forms of thought and expression appear to have
distorted the content of his digressions cannot avoid drawing heavily on
Josephus for vital knowledge of the sects.” And now there exists another
body of literature of a quite different kind to set against Josephus’
remarks, at least on the Essenes. For modern scholarship, as much as for
the lay public, the Dead Sea Scrolls found at and around Qumran,
between, mainly, 1947 and 1956, were no less than a revelation. Their
contributions to research are of many kinds as are the problems that they
raise.8 But few would deny that the documents (or at any rate those
which have been so far published) illuminate one of Josephus’ sects

4 On Josephus, see also CAH Vol. x?, ch. 1gd. On Josephus’ use of 1 Maccabees see Gafni 1989
(D 117). The impact of Josephus’ Hasmonean ancestry on, especially, his Antiquities is studied by G.
Fuks, ‘Josephus and the Hasmoneans’, J JS 41, 2 (1990) 166-76.

5 For Nicolaus, Stern 1974 (D 158) no. 41, 227ff; Wacholder 1989 (D 168). The use of Strabo by
Josephus: Stern 1974 (D 158) no. 42, 261ff. © See below, p. 289.

7 Moore 1929 (p 137) asserts a far-reaching Hellenization. But see now Beall 1988 (D 97) and the
notes in Vermes and Goodman 1987 (D 167).

8 One major text, the Damascus Document (CD), had been known since the end of the last
century, when two manuscripts were discovered in the Cairo Genizah. For a conspectus of
published texts, Schirer 1973-87 (p 153) 11.1, 380-467. Translations in G. Vermes 1987 (D 166);
Lohse 1971 (D 132). Introductions: Vermes 1982 (pD 165); Knibb 1987 (p 127).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE SOURCES 279

directly and brilliantly, giving us unmediated access to its thought-
world, over an extended period of time ~ for it should be said
straightaway that the identification of the Qumran sect with Josephus’
Essenes is now generally accepted. The chronology of the sect’s
development, as cryptically reflected in its sectarian regulations and
biblical interpretations (especially in their most characteristic form, the
pesher) is still highly controversial. None the less, it will be seen below
that a partial reconstruction can be made with an acceptable degree of
probability.

Other Jewish texts among the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha are
likely to belong to this period, though their dating cannot be certain.
Fragments of some of these have now, in fact, been found at Qumran,
but from this finding we can infer no more than that members of the
Qumran sect had an interest in reading them. Such texts as, for example,
Jubilees and the Psalms of Solomon may sometimes embody cryptic
responses to public matters, which can be both a basis for assigning a
historical context to them and a source of interest for the historian; but
the risk of circular argument is great.? There are also fragments (or
alleged fragments) of Jewish texts written in Greek, some of them in
Alexandria, which are likely to come from our era. These include the
tragedian Ezekiel, the ‘Jewish Homer’ Sosates, the historian Eupole-
mus, who is plausibly though not certainly identified with Judas
Maccabaeus’ emissary of that name, and the additions to the book of
Esther: their names and titles alone make ‘it clear that from them we
acquire a notion of the way in which some Jews were assimilating Greek
culture. In this category, also, is the undamaged text of the Letter of
Aristeas to Philocrates on the commissioning of the Septuagint version
of the Bible, and this text can shed a little light on Judaea as well.!°

One major development of the age (which some would regard as
ultimately the most important of all for the Jewish religion) is shrouded
in obscurity: the evolution of the orally transmitted interpretation of the
Torah in terms of the Law (Aal/akhah) and lore (aggadah) was proceeding
apace, above all, no doubt, in Pharisaic circles. But the vast corpus of
Rabbinic literature in which this interpretation is set out emerges only
three centuries later, by which time there remained no more than garbled
recollections of the sages and students of the period of the Second
Temple. Rabbinic thought, for all its diversity, is notably lacking in
historical concerns. Recollections purporting to be of pre-7o events and

° Translations and commentaries, Charlesworth 1985 (D 103) 1. For an interpretation which ties
the texts closely to historical events, see Mendels 1987 (D 134).

10 Bibliography in Schirer 1973-87 (D 153) 111, 470-694. Commentaries with translations in
Charlesworth 1985 (D 103) 11. See also ch. 3 (G. W. E. Nickelsburg) and ch. 4 (H. W. Attridge), in
Stone 1984 (Dp 161). For an attempt to make a Hasmonean linkage, Collins 1980 (D 104).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

280 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

debates are quite often to be found in this literature, for example, the
anecdotes set in the court of Alexander Jannaeus. But such material
tends to appear in works dating from late antiquity — the Talmudim of
Jerusalem and of Babylon and the Midrashim (exegetical texts) — rather
than in material compiled closer in time to the actual events, that is to say
Mishnah and Tosefta (of ¢. A.D. 200). This and other considerations
render the historical value of such anecdotes questionable, and they
should play no more than a minor role in precise reconstruction of
Second Temple Judaism. However, one document which should be
singled out because it contains clear chronological reflections of Hasmo-
nean achievements and may date to as early as the first century A.D., is
Megillath Taanith, a list of dates on which fasting is forbidden."

In singling out what is distinctive in the surviving evidence, we
should not omit the major contributions made by archaeology, even if
discoveries relating to our period have been at times overshadowed,
once by the dominance of biblical discoveries, and latterly by the more
visible attractions of the Herodian and Roman eras. For all that,
architectural remains now bear witness to the Hasmonean dynasty’s
lifestyle and to something of its aspirations in urban expansion and in
territorial defence. The coinage of the later Hasmoneans was less
developed than their architecture, and indeed was for the most part
artistically undistinguished; the full interpretation of this coinage still
eludes us, and some would even doubt its political importance in its own
day. Still, as evidence of the regime’s image and ideology at certain
moments, it is invaluable. The spade continues, of course, to produce
new numismatic material.

Ill, THE EMERGENCE OF JUDAEA AS A HELLENISTIC STATE

The best way to understand the emergence of the Hasmoneans as
powerful rulers in Judaea, is to look back to the beginning of the story.
Judas Maccabaeus (‘the Hammer?’)!? had emerged, on his father’s death,
as leader of the struggle against Antiochus IV’s suppression of the
Jewish cult (1 Macc. 3:1), but no official title is associated with him. The
death-bed instructions ascribed to the old Mattathias have him declare
Judas, in biblical style, to be the people’s commander who would fight
their battles for them. In fact, it is obvious that Judas’ overall responsibi-
lity for the nation took on both military and political aspects: he
appointed ‘leaders of the people, commanders of thousands, of

"’ For a more positive evaluation of Talmudic evidence on the Hasmoneans, see Alon 1977 (D
89); also, with emphasis on the Jerusalem, rather than the Babylonian Talmud, Efron 1987 (D 114).
On Megillath Taanith, see Lichtenstein 1931-32 (D 131) and bibliography in Schiirer 1973-87 (D 153)
L1ig-1$. 12 No better etymology has yet been offered: Schiirer 1973-87 (D 153) 1, 158. 49.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

JUDAEA AS A HELLENISTIC STATE 281

hundreds, of fifties and of tens’ (1 Macc. 3:55) and, after 164 B.c., he
organized the priests to serve in the rededicated Temple service. Yet in
the documents from 2 Maccabees which record the dealings of Lysias,
Antiochus IV’s viceroy, after the king’s death (2 Macc. 11), there is no
acknowledgement of Judas at all. Perhaps it was this very absence of
formal position which led Josephus to the belief that Judas actually
became high priest on the death of the Seleucid nominee, Alcimus (AJ
XII. 414, 419 and 434). Yet this is not only unsupported by 1 Maccabees,
where Alcimus is shown to have died after Judas (1 Macc. 9:5 4-6), but
contradicts Josephus’ own statement elsewhere that the high priesthood
was vacant for seven years at the end of Alcimus’ tenure (AJ xx.237; cf.
Vit. 4). In any case, Judas himself was killed in battle about the autumn
of 161, before any need arose for more precise definition of his position.

Judas had been the third of Mattathias’ five sons (1 Macc. 2:4—5); the
survivors charged the youngest, Jonathan, with rescuing their fortunes
after Judas’ defeat and death at Eleasa in 160 B.c., and the destruction of
his followers. Jonathan, now, was to be ‘our ruler and commander and
to fight our battles for us’ (1 Macc. 9:30). The decision to continue the
struggle, with the ultimate aim of ousting both the Seleucid general,
Bacchides, and the Jewish Hellenizers who still held Jerusalem, was
entirely in the spirit of Judas’ activities since 164. The new element in
the position of the leader was the registering of a popular vote in his
favour. Jonathan, though tried and tested in war, was an instinctive
politician just as Judas had been a natural general, and the younger
brother may well have seen the value of securing a popular mandate by
way of substitute for Judas’ charisma.

But greater changes were to come. When Bacchides, making no
headway, came to terms with Jonathan around 155 B.c., Jerusalem
remained with the Hellenizers, yet Jonathan was not prevented from
establishing himself at Michmash, a small place north of the city; there he
‘began to judge the people’. This biblical archaism, characteristic of the
idiom of 1 Maccabees, may well conceal an official grant and recognition
by the Seleucid monarch Demetrius I of a local fiefdom.!4 Subsequent
developments were startlingly rapid. Jonathan had fully grasped what
opportunities the moment held for fishing in the troubled Seleucid
waters to enhance his own position; out of Demetrius’ conflict with his
rival Alexander Balas, yet bigger privileges emerged for the Hasmonean
leadership. The family’s influence in Judaea was evidently now such that
Jonathan could deliver better support than could the ‘Hellenizers’, and
Demetrius was especially in need of troops. Once authorized to raise a
proper army, Jonathan was able, in 152, to occupy and fortify Jerusalem,

'3 On the letter of Lysias in 2 Maccabees, Habicht 1976 (p 121) 178-85.
'4 Bickerman 1962 (D 99) 136-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

282 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

though the Akra stronghold (which we should understand, therefore, to
have been a sealed-off section of the city rather than a mere fort) was still
in the hands of Hellenizers and Seleucids.'5

It remained for Jonathan’s dominant position in Jerusalem and in the
country to be signalled with the high priesthood. The high priest was not
necessarily the supreme figure in Jewish religious life, but the centrality
of the Temple gave ready prominence among the people to those who
managed it. The political significance of the high priest had perhaps
originated in his role as a tax-collector for the Ptolemies. Then, from
about 200 B.c. the holder’s increasing cultic eminence is apparent, and in
that period we see one high priestly line, that of Onias, gaining power
and wealth through monopoly of the post. The bitter fighting over the
high priesthood during the 160s had, no doubt, served permanently to
fix its significance, so that for the late Seleucids, no less than for the
Romans after them, it offered itself as the natural channel of control and
influence. During the disturbances of the twenty years before Jonathan,
there had been either Hellenizing high priests or none, and the
appointment of one of the rebel Maccabee brothers was a momentous
development. The change had been hastened by the ambitions of
Alexander Balas: it was he who, asserting his right to rule and in effect
outbidding Demetrius, had made Jonathan high priest. Demetrius then
conjured up further offers to counter Alexander’s. After the death of
Demetrius, we find Jonathan appointed provincial governor (meridarch),
and becoming one of the First Friends of Alexander Balas. From
Demetrius II, exemption from tribute soon came, as well as what looks
like a virtual licence to expand beyond the confines of Judaea, into
Samaria. Then unfulfilled promises, or perhaps the waning fortunes of
Demetrius II and the emergence of the pretender, Tryphon, led to fresh
negotiations and to the renewal of Jonathan’s high priesthood by the
young Antiochus VI, together with the appointment of Jonathan’s
brother, Simon, as sfrategos of the whole coast. The standing and
accoutrements of one of the king’s Friends were once again added.

Thus the Maccabees, once the most unremitting of rebels, had become
willing dependents of one Seleucid after another, governing Judaea by
favour. The control that they were able to exercise lay principally in
playing the various contenders off against one another. Jonathan was
careful also to look further afield, sending ambassadors to Rome to
renew the friendship and alliance between Jews and Romans originally
negotiated through Judas’ envoys.'6 Jonathan’s ambassadors gave
expression as well to Judaea’s new self-consciousness as a Hellenistic
state, by visiting (among other places) Sparta and securing letters that

'S 1 Macc. 2:20ff, AJ xtt.qz. On the location of the Akra, see below, n. 20.

16 The dismissal of Jonathan’s treaty as a fictitious doublet of the one made a few years later by
Simon persists in some quarters: see Giovannini and Miller 1971 (D 118).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

JUDAEA AS A HELLENISTIC STATE 283

asserted kinship and ancient ties between the two peoples. The text of the
letter from Jonathan which was handed to the Spartans alluded,
apparently, to earlier contact between king Areius and Onias the high
priest.!7 But Rome could not protect Jonathan within the world of
intrigue in which he moved (far less, of course, could Sparta). That he
should die by Tryphon’s treachery, as he did in 143/2, seems in a sad way
a fitting end to his career. The instability of the Seleucid kings brought
perils to their friends; but there was no going back. The pattern of
relationships had been set. As for the Hellenizers who remained in the
Akra, they were becoming little more than a symbolic presence in
Jerusalem and their day was almost done.

Within Jonathan’s framework, there was room to push for ever
greater freedom of action. In the year 142, as 1 Maccabees has it (13:41-
2), ‘the yoke of the Gentiles was taken away from Israel. And the people
began to write on their records and their contracts, “‘in the first year of
Simon, the great high priest, commander and leader of the Jews’’’.
Simon had taken over immediately from his younger brother and been
drawn into a similar course of action, a show of strength, followed by
well-judged diplomatic feelers. Determined military resistance had been
necessary, even before his brother’s death, to oust the now hostile
Tryphon, who, tricking Jonathan, had invaded Palestine from the north-
west. Negotiation with the usurping Tryphon’s rival, Demetrius IT, had
been the next move. From him, it would appear, came by letter the offer
of peace, immunity from tribute and remission of taxes or tax arrears (it is
not clear which). Simon’s high priesthood was implicitly recognized by
Demetrius; it may or may not have been a Seleucid grant in the first place;
either way, what mattered was the freedom from tribute, marking a new,
autonomous status for Judaea, and possessing a symbolic meaning
which was well captured in Josephus’ accounts (BJ 1.53; AJ xit.211).
The establishment of the new chronological era had the same signifi-
cance, even if that does not seem to have survived as a lasting basis of
reckoning.

At the same time, a degree of scepticism is perhaps called for,
especially when we notice how both 1 Maccabees and Josephus wax
lyrical about Simon’s achievements (‘his famous name became known all
the way to the ends of the earth’, 1 Macc. 14:9). It is worth remembering
that the tradition that has reached us, channelled through 1 Maccabees, is
dedicated to glorifying Judaea’s Hasmonean rulers, and that Simon was
the progenitor of the line. The first book of Maccabees was probably
written under John Hyrcanus,'8 and Hyrcanus was Simon’s son. A
history of Hyrcanus’ reign was known to the author of 1 Maccabees

"7 1 Mace. 12:2; 12:5-23; 14:16-23; Joseph. AJ x111.166-70. Bickerman 1988 (D 100) 184-5,

proposes a Cyrenaic origin for the fictitious Spartan—Jewish relationship.
'8 And even if written soon afterwards, it was evidently dependent on Hyrcanus’ memoirs.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

284 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

(16:24), and it must have been a highly flattering record. It is likely to
have opened with a retrospect over the achievements of Simon, and to
have been responsible for fixing the picture of his rule. Moreover, this
active image-making had been set in motion still earlier, for Simon
himself was the dynasty’s first and perhaps its best propagandist. He
stamped his achievement on the public mind with festival and ceremony
(but without for one moment, we may be sure, departing from the
religious ban on making human images, which was strictly interpreted at
the time).

The actual situation was not as clear-cut. Given the unsettled state of
the Seleucid monarchy, Demetrius II’s declaration did not guarantee the
abandonment of future claims; and, in the event, it was not until the
death of Antiochus VII Sidetes (in 129 B.c.) that Jerusalem would be left
truly to her own devices. We may even doubt whether all the promises
made to Simon in those years actually bore fruit, for the right to issue
coins, granted to him ina letter from Antiochus VII, after Demetrius II’s
imprisonment in 140/39 (1 Macc. 15:6), seems never to have been
exercised at all. There is a telling absence of any coinage of Simon’s from
the archaeological record.!°

All this, however, is not to deny that Simon oversaw significant
political developments. He imposed his authority on the whole country
and he was the first Hasmonean to behave consistently as its ruler. His
starting-point was Jerusalem, of whose psychological importance he
showed full appreciation. An early move, made in 141 B.c., was therefore
to bring about the surrender of the surviving garrison from the Akra, the
city’s Hellenistic base, which had been both fortress and separate urban
centre and ‘from which they had sallied forth and polluted the precinct of
the Temple’. The location of the Akra is, strangely, still uncertain,
though Jerusalern’s western hill remains the most likely general area.?0
Jonathan had sealed off the zone with a wall, in an attempt to starve it out
(1 Macc. 12:35—7), and there was little left for Simon to do but manage
the expulsion, and to make the most of the transfer. Choruses, hymns
and instruments as well as the traditional waving of palm branches
accompanied the grand entry, and an annual festival was declared to
commemorate the historic moment.?! The Hellenists as a faction were
never heard of again. The reconstruction and walling of the city, begun
by Jonathan, could now be pushed on (1 Macc. 10:10-11; 13:10); and we
should probably ascribe to Simon the inclusion, for the first time since

19 Coins once attributed to Simon have been known for over a century to belong to the frst
Jewish revolt.

20 In the absence of archaeological traces, an upper city site for the Akra has been favoured, in
spite of Josephus, AJ xu.252: Avigad 1984 (D 93) 64~5. See also Tsafrir 1975 (D 163) proposing the

south-eastern hill.
21 1 Macc. 14:5 1~2. This festival figures, under the date 23 lyyar, in Megi//ath Taanith 6 (see n. 11).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

JUDAEA AS A HELLENISTIC STATE 285

the days of the first Temple, of the western hill as a living area within the
city, and of much of the completed circumference of the so-called ‘first
wall’. Much of this wall’s line can now be fairly securely traced and
notable remains on the north and south-west sides have recently been
uncovered, to add to those known on the south. The political meaning of
walling Jerusalem needs no emphasis. We should not overlook the
equally important general statement made by the planning of a spacious
capital and its expansion over a difficult site.2¢

The year 140 saw another great public occasion, this one of an
unprecedented constitutional character. The assembled people declared
Simon high priest, commander and ethnarch — head of the nation — of the
Jews, ‘for ever, until a trustworthy prophet shall arise’ (1 Macc. 14:41).?3
The amalgam of powers was not new, but the change lay in the manner
of their conferment; they were now internally sanctioned and external
approval was no longer regarded as necessary. This was a big step, even
after Simon’s previous advances. The Parthian invasion of Iran under
Mithridates I will have emboldened him, and it is possible that by the
time of the people’s decree Demetrius II was already in Parthian
captivity. Simon’s powers were as monarchic as the purple robe and gold
clasp which he was to wear, even though the name of king was avoided.
His orders were not to be opposed, assemblies were not to be convened
without his consent, all on pain of punishment; the unanimity of the
popular decision was emphasized. On this Simon’s position ultimately
rested. It was endorsed by the new king Antiochus VII in a letter of 138
B.c., but not shaken by that king’s rapid volte-face, his demands for
either the return of the Jerusalem citadel and other towns, or else the
payment of tribute on them, and his threat of war (1 Macc. 15:2-9;
26-35).

The form of rule set up by the decree for Simon drew on traditional
Jewish conceptions. None the less, the people of Hasmonaean Jerusalem
were sufficiently influenced by the style of the day in public affairs to have
their declaration inscribed in bronze, just as a Greek city might do, and
to display it in no less a place than the Temple precinct and also in its
treasury. The new Jewish state was thus visibly Hellenistic in its public
forms.

Once again, something of the spirit of the regime is encapsulated in
the ruler’s death. The aged Simon himself was murdered within five
years of the decree, together with two of his sons, as he feasted and drank
in a fortress near Jericho. The assassin was his son-in-law, the wealthy

22 Avigad 1984 (D 93) 65~74. The Hasmonean defences appear to have connected in several cases
with elements of much earlier, Davidic construction.

23. This sentence is absent from Josephus’ version, AJ x11.318: see Gafni 1989 (D 117) 118. The
Hebrew title disguised in the unintelligible év(a)oapayeA of 1 Macc. 14:27, probably conceals Sar
> Am-El, Prince of the People. Klausner in Schalit 1976 (D 152) 203.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

286 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

and interestingly named Ptolemy son of Abubus (Aboub), who was
commander of the plain of Jericho (1 Macc. 16:11), and had sought to
involve other army officers in his conspiracy. This man does not appear
to have been a Jew (AJ xiut.234-5); and, on the failure of his attempt to
gain the support of Antiochus VII for a seizure of power, he fled to the
court of a local dynast, Zeno Cotylas of the partly Hellenized city of
Philadelphia (Amman).

John Hyrcanus, Simon’s third son, who had already been governor of
the important fortified town of Gezer, assumed the high priesthood on
his father’s death. This suggests that the latter post was designated as
hereditary by the ‘for ever’ of Simon’s investiture decree; and John was
presumably already high priest when he sacrificed before setting out to
attack Ptolemy. However, Josephus (AJ xir.230) does not clarify the
mechanism of succession, probably because it was of no interest to his
source, a writer concerned, rather, with international affairs, on the one
hand, or with domestic dramas, on the other.”4 It is clear, at any rate that
a dynasty had been established, even if not yet a monarchy.

There would always be uneasiness and sometimes contention sur-
rounding the definition of Hasmonean sovereignty. The Jews more
often than not nursed doubts about the fitness of any man’s holding
power of a kingly type.25 We may point to various ways in which
Hyrcanus’ rule was hedged about or challenged. Yet, in the first place,
we should stress the impact of a thirty-one-year tenure (135-104 B.C.),
followed by an accepted dynastic succession; John’s rule (arche) is
described in the pages of Josephus as both secular and religious (BJ 1.68;
AJ xut.291; 299). With John too we see an independent coinage, albeit
limited to bronze; these are the first coins, we may now be confident, to
be minted by any Hasmonean.26

While Tyrian silver now became the principal major currency for the
region, filling the gap left by the Seleucid withdrawal, everyday needs in
Judaea were supplied by successive large issues of aniconic perutot, low
denomination coins of which 336 made half a shekel. Their craftsman-
ship varied in quality. Economic prudence may have dictated the
reluctance of John as well as that of his successors to launch forth into
the minting of silver ina country without its own mines.2” Whatever the
reason for the lack of that kind of full declaration of autonomy, there was

24 See Stern 1974 (D 158) 240 n. 251 for the argument that Nicolaus’ material comes from a
general Scleucid narrative, rather than one on the Jews.

25 De Vaux 1965 (p 111) 98-9; a tendency which sought to promote monarchy is also, however,
identifiable at times.

26 The debate on the beginnings of Hasmonean coinage has centred on whether Yehonanan coins
belong to John Hyrcanus I or to Hyrcanus II. The arguments of Meshorer 1982 (D 135) 11.35-8,
cannot stand up to the evidence of stratification from several sites: Barag and Qedar 1980 (D 95).

27 Rappaport 1976 (D 150).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION 287

still considerable significance in the small coins that were produced, as
can be seen from the care taken over the choice of title. Hyrcanus’ coins
carry two types of formula, both written in an archaic palaeo-Hebrew
script which evoked the days of the first Temple. One group has
‘Yehohanan the high priest and the council (or community) of the Jews’.
and another group has ‘Yehonanan the high priest head of the council
(or community) of the Jews’. We cannot date the change, and even the
sequence of the two styles remains open to reassessment. But it may be
reasonable to suggest that John was initially reluctant to take on any title
beyond the traditional high priesthood, but that later a cautious formula
was allowed to emerge, which still gave the assembled people a high
visibility in its wording. The term for this entity, fever, may refer to a
political body, like the later Sanhedrin. Equally, fever may have a more
general connotation, signifying, in effect, the Jewish demos. Either way,
the ruler shows extreme care not to separate himself from his people.”8
Even this caution, however, was not sufficient to curb the strictures of
the more punctilious religious elements, as will be seen.

Simon’s end in an army conspiracy, had revealed, among other things,
how the military base of Maccabean authority, far from diminishing with
the end of the struggle for survival, had become institutionalized.
Almost to the end, the dynasty would remain a warrior dynasty. Peace
was something to wonder at; but even then, it was the security born of
victory that was spoken of. Under Simon, it was said, ‘each man sat
under his own vine and under his own fig tree. The enemies in those days
left their land and the enemy kings were crushed’ (1 Macc. 14:12~13).
The dynasty’s chronicler (as 1 Maccabees may fairly be dubbed) speaks
with pride of the young men’s appearance in their dazzling uniforms,
and leaves us in no doubt that the regime’s ideology contained a strong
dose of militarism.

IV. TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

The largest territorial gains were to be made under Simon’s successors.
But a brief review of the Judaean state’s expansion before the death of
Simon will show that the map had already changed significantly by that
date. The Jewish entity of the Persian and early Hellenistic period might
be described as a small temple-state under a priesthood. Now, with a
strong army and enlarged aspirations, it had outgrown that model.
Defensive needs had shaded imperceptibly into aggressive or punitive
policies.

From the beginning, the war against the Seleucids brought with it
enmity with those Gentiles who lived locally, both inside and outside

28 Meshoter 1982 (D 135) 47-8, with reference to U. Rappaport’s paper in Hebrew.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

288 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

Judaea. The culmination came after Jonathan’s kidnapping, when the
surrounding peoples are said to have been enchanted with the possibility
of destroying Judaism root and branch (1 Macc. 12:53). The Maccabean
Wars are seen at this point quite simply as a struggle against the heathen
and it is impossible to distinguish, in the leaders’ activities, between the
vision of a holy and cleansing war, conceived of in biblical terms, and the
real strategic need to weaken a threatening force. The archaic languages
in which the reports are cast subordinates the practical to the ideological,
and conceals a more nuanced situation: we know, at any rate, that not all
the local tribes were unfriendly during this period, for the Nabatean
Arabs across the Jordan gave the Maccabees useful information more
than once.

Jonathan’s campaigns show that he had on several occasions seized
the strategic initiative in a manner which was wholly professional. He
had tackled strategic coastal areas, in the name first of Alexander Balas
and then of Tryphon. Cities that did not open their gates were assaulted,
as were Azotus (Ashdod), Joppa and Gaza, though not Ascalon, which
did. The Philistine town of Akron with its territory was acquired by way
of reward. Other lasting results of his activities were the permanent
garrisoning of Beth Zur, on Judaea’s southern line, which was the
Syrians’ last remaining fortress apart from the Akra in Jerusalem; and, to
the north, the gain by royal grants of three districts which had previously
been reckoned as part of Samaria. Moreover, quite apart from acqui-
sition, Jonathan’s geographical and economic horizons were expanded
by far-flung campaigns against Demetrius II, which took him through
the northermost part of the Galilee and into the Lebanon.

It was left to Simon, as one of his first acts, permanently to settle Jews
in Joppa, expelling the ‘idolatrous’ inhabitants (1 Macc. 13:11), or at any
rate some part of them. This secured for his state an outlet to the sea, as
was fully appreciated at (or near) the time (1 Macc. 12:43—8). Gezer
(Gazara in Greek), strategically placed at the edge of the Judaean
foothills and controlling Jerusalem’s access to Joppa, was treated in the
same way as the latter. Gezer’s first excavator, Macalister, identified a
“Maccabaean castle’, but this is now known to date from Solomon’s
time.?? More recently, however, domestic architecture of the late second
century has been revealed.9 And now a suggestive possibility has been
mooted, that an elaborate system of cisterns found within a complex of
Hellenistic houses, are Jewish ritual bathing pools (#iquaoth), offering
the necessary stopped channel between the pure and the impure water.
They would then testify directly to occupation by ‘those who obeyed the
Law’ of what previously had been ordinary Hellenistic living quarters.3!

29 Macalister 1911 (D 133) 209-23; Dever 1986 (D 113). 30 Seger 1971 (D 154).
3 Reich and Geva 1981 (D 151).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION 289

Possible epigraphic testimony to the Maccabean occupation also exists,
in the shape of half a dozen boundary markers, discovered at different
times, bearing in Hebrew and Greek the words ‘boundary of Gezer’,
sometimes with ‘of Alkios’ added. The conjecture that these represent
limits within which freer movement and carrying could be permitted and
that they attest Hasmonean observance is highly dubious.32 But perhaps
the most important archaeological information to emerge from this site,
is that occupation was abandoned around 100 B.c. The same pattern was
revealed with the excavation of Beth Zur, similarly a town fortified by
the Seleucids and taken over by the Maccabees, where there are signs of
vigorous growth under Jonathan and Simon, with settlement spreading
outside the old walls, but soon afterwards coming to an end altogether.
We may conclude that the urban development of this era was closely tied
up with strategic needs, and that when these changed, in the later
Maccabean period, the centres of population also shifted.

The territorial claims of Jonathan and Simon did not go untested. As
soon as the new king Antiochus VII Sidetes had disposed of the usurper
Tryphon, Simon’s assistance became less important to him than the
restoration of his lost revenues and his authority in Palestine. His
general, Cendebaeus, was told to take possession of the coastal strip and
to attack Judaea from Jamnia (1 Macc. 15:38—40). Josephus, who is here
independent of 1 Maccabees, has the commander under instruction also
to seize the Jewish leader in person (AJ xut.225). Simon is said to have
put 20,000 men into the field and to have held the day.

Hyrcanus had to deal with the consequences. Antiochus invaded and
ravaged the country, and then laid Jerusalem under the strongest of
blockades (BJ 1.61; AJ x111.236-46). Our information on this lengthy
siege and on its outcome is somewhat obscured by the partisan character
of our accounts: on the one hand, Josephus, in apologetic vein,
highlights gestures made by Antiochus during and after the siege,
gestures by which the monarch expressed special respect towards the
piety of his adversaries; on the other, a fragment of a Greek account,
surviving in Diodorus, appears to have used the story as a vehicle for an
anti-Jewish outburst, focusing on advice given to the king after the
conclusion of the siege, which urged him to extirpate the Jewish cult,
there described in the most lurid terms. In any event, both accounts
bring out the fact that Sidetes terminated the whole campaign in an
unexpected and generous manner, with conduct very different from that
of Epiphanes some thirty years earlier. No garrison was installed in
Jerusalem; only a symbolic section of wall was taken down; and Joppa,
Gezer and the other cities held by Simon were made subject to tribute,

3 Information on boundary stones collected in Schirer 1973-87 (D 153) 1.191 n. 8. The

inscription discovered by Macalister, CL 1.1184, wishing a conflagration on the ‘house of Simon’,
demands even greater caution from the interpreter.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

290 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

but not removed from Jewish control.33 Hyrcanus, who, according to
Josephus’ story in the Jewish War, had funded himself by rifling David’s
tomb, soon afterwards set off with his army to accompany Sidetes into
Parthia, where he was treated with courtesy, if Josephus is to be
believed. The collapse of this expedition, Sidetes’ death in battle, the
Seleucid abandonment of Iran and the renewal of wars within the
dynasty finally left Hyrcanus a clear field. It is on record that the payment
of general tribute now ceased permanently (AJ x111.273).

So ended one dependence. We should not, however, conclude this
discussion without observing that another was slowly growing. The
puzzle of Sidetes’ abrupt withdrawal from Jerusalem may well have its
solution in a behind-the-scenes statement from the Roman Senate, who
will at this point not have welcomed the threatened Seleucid revival.
This interpretation depends upon a senatus consultum brought to us by
Josephus as a tailpiece to his account of Hyrcanus’ rule, but most
appropriately associated with this stage in it, and with Antiochus VII
(AJ xutt.25 7-64). The document records the report of a Jewish embassy
to the Senate stating that Antiochus (we are not told which king of that
name is meant) is holding various Jewish territories, including Joppa,
Gezer and Pegae, in contravention of a previous senatorial decree. The
embassy invokes a long-standing friendship and alliance between the
Jewish and Roman peoples; and the body of the new decree reiterates
that alliance without deciding on any immediate response. Such a
restricted statement may well have been sufficient intimidation, and we
cannot know what covert activity accompanied it.#4

The history of Rome’s alliances with the Jews was by now a well-
established one, begun with Judas’ famous treaty of 161 B.c., and
reiterated and more widely publicized under Jonathan and then under
Simon. Even if no more than token gestures, based upon a vague
consciousness of her possible interests, had at first been intended on
Rome’s part, the situation had developed since those days. This is not the
place to examine the wider perspectives.35 But it is worth noting that the
expulsion from Rome in 139 B.c. of the Jews residing there, which
Valerius Maximus briefly reports, did not affect the diplomatic situation.
The expulsion was evidently one of Rome’s periodic reactions to foreign
religions in the city, and not a general attack on Jews and their
interests.%6

33 Rajak 1981 (D 147) against the view that Sidetes treated Jerusalem punitively.

4 Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 77-8, for the context in Roman diplomacy.

33 See CAH Vol. vini? 382~7.

% Val. Max. 1.3.2 (in epitome, with text uncertain). The Jews appear to be identified as
worshippers of Jove Sabazios. This is the only clear evidence of the Jews in Rome at this time. Some
regard the story as confused or apocryphal. See Lane 1979 (D 128) and Stern 1974 (D 158) no. 147,
357-60, on attempts to link the expulsion specifically with Simon’s embassy.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONQUEST AND JUDAIZATION 291

V. CONQUEST AND JUDAIZATION

The rule of John Hyrcanus lasted for thirty-one years, from 135/4 B.C.,
until 104. His eldest son, Aristobulus, who succeeded him as high priest,
lived for only one further year. There followed a regime nearly as long-
lasting as that of Hyrcanus, for Alexander Jannaeus (Yannai), Aristobu-
lus’ brother, ruled for twenty-seven years as high priest; he also took the
title of king. He was succeeded by his redoubtable widow, Salome
Alexandra, who, it would seem, had previously been the widow of
Aristobulus and, as such, had engineered Jannaeus’ succession; and she
occupied the throne between 76 and 67 B.c., the eve of Rome’s arrival.37

The extension of Jewish territory continued throughout this period,
and the dynasty’s military capacity grew, especially after Hyrcanus
introduced the practice of hiring mercenaries. None the less, it is
important to point out that, of all the rulers, only Jannaeus pursued
unequivocally aggressive policies. Hyrcanus, to be sure, paved the way;
but his activities were restricted to carefully judged campaigns with
limited targets, and there were long periods when he was not at war.38

Josephus gives a résumé of Hyrcanus’s early wars, beginning in 129
B.c.: ‘as soon as he had heard of the death of Antiochus [Sidetes],
Hyrcanus marched out against the cities of Syria, expecting to find them
devoid of soldiers and of anyone able to rescue them, which was indeed
the case’ (AJ x111.254). This sweeping sentence heralds several import-
ant conquests: the capture of Medeba in Moab (southern Jordan),
together with the neighbouring town of Samoga (or Samega); of the
Samaritans’ city of Shechem and of their shrine on Mount Gerizim; and,
lastly, of the Idumaean cities of Adora? and Marissa, to the south of
Judaea. The Idumaeans are said to have accepted circumcision and
adopted the Jewish law, in order to retain their homeland.”

Towards the end of his life, Hyrcanus returned to the Samaritan
region; this time two of his sons laid siege to the Hellenized city of
Samaria (AJ x111.275—83). The siege lasted a year, but neither the
Samaritan population, nor Antiochus IX (Cyzicenus) who came to their
aid, nor the two generals whom he later left behind there, nor even the
troops supplied to Antiochus by Ptolemy Lathyrus could shake off

37 The marriages of Salome Alexandra: Sievers 1989 (D 155) 135-6. Putting the end of her rule in
67 B.C. is a consequence of accepting the best of the possible reconstructions of Hasmonean
chronology: Schirer 1973-87 (D 153) 1.200, n. 1.

38 Stern 1981 (D 159). For an assessment of the military capabilities of the later Hasmoneans, see
now 1. Shatzman, The Armies of the Later Hasmoneans and Herod from Hellenistic to Roman Frameworks
(Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 25) (Tubingen, 1991).

#% Josephus also Hellenizes the name as Adoreon and Adoreus, as well as using the biblical form,
Adorain, in the parellel account, BJ 1.63.

“© However, at AJ x1v.403, Josephus is still able to describe them as ‘half- Jews’.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

292 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

Hyrcanus. In the end, we hear, he effaced the whole settlement, by the
method, if this can be believed, of undermining its foundations.
Scythopolis, the Greek city situated at the key point where the valley of
Jezreel meets the Jordan valley, was taken immediately afterwards. The
Jewish War (1.66) says that it was razed to the ground and its inhabitants
reduced to slavery, a rare case of enslavement being mentioned as a
consequence of Hasmonean seizure.

The motivation behind these different campaigns is for the most part
lost to us. To increase his resources may well have been a priority for
Hyrcanus, given, on the one hand, the agriculturally unproductive
character of his homeland, with, in addition, its lack of minerals of any
kind, and on the other the demands of a new aristocracy in an enlarged
city. Trading interests could go some way to explaining the conflict with
the Nabateans, formerly a friendly people, since they had long operated
by controlling the roads, and Medeba was situated on the King’s
Highway, the great trade route which skirted the desert and linked the
Red Sea with Damascus. The Samaritans had cut Judaea off on the
north and the Idumaeans on the south; a cryptic remark in Josephus
actually alludes to some connexion between those two zones, explaining
the destruction of Samaria in terms of her interference with Marissa (AJ
x11.275). As for Hyrcanus’ treatment of conquered territory, that
followed for the most part the unremitting severity learned by his family
through bitter necessity during their early struggles. Special vindictive-
ness was reserved for the Samaritans of Shechem, monotheists and once
Jews, who, however, unlike the Jerusalemites, had accepted the trans-
formation of their cult by Antiochus Epiphanes. Whatever its origins,
the schism was now complete. The apocryphal book of Jubilees,
thought by some to belong to this period, in its version of the biblical
story of the rape of Dinah and of her brothers’ brutal punishment of the
Shechemites, omits to mention that the Shechemites had circumcised
themselves before the assault, and this interpretation of the text may well
have been meant to make more palatable Hyrcanus’ treatment of
Samaria/Shechem, by glossing over her connexion with Israel.42

We are not entitled to assume, as modern writers are inclined to do,
that destruction and expulsion were the preordained lot of all those who,
unlike the Idumaeans, would not convert; still less to imagine that
Hyrcanus, and perhaps others of the later Hasmoneans, were seeking to
ensure for every part of their holdings a purely Jewish occupation. That
is to go well beyond our evidence; and such a total repopulation, with a

41 On Nabatean—Jewish relations, Kasher 1988 (D 126) 6-24.

42 For a summary of views on the Samaritan schism, see Purvis 1986 (D 143). On Samaria and
Marissa, Egger 1986 (p 115) 102ff. For Jubilees, Mendels 1987 (D 134) 72~3, and also 104~5 on the
Testament of Levi, another possible reflection of the treatment of Samaria.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONQUEST AND JUDAIZATION 293

complete reversion after Pompey’s conquest to a pagan populace, is
scarcely conceivable. What we know of the region’s towns suggests that
their inhabitants were for the most part ethnically and culturally mixed.

The Judaization of Edom must have had its own special story. In the
light of indications in the ancient narratives that this transformation was
at least partly voluntary and of the attachment of the Idumaeans to the
Jewish cause at the time of the great revolt of a.D. 66—74,43 a certain
affinity between the Jews and a significant element within Idumaea
seems probable. It is not unlikely that, in this area so close to Jerusalem,
Jewish settlers had become thoroughly intermingled with the Semitic
population. We know something of the inhabitants of Hellenistic
Marissa from the names in the inscriptions of its remarkable rock-cut
tombs, but they have not yielded a clear answer to this question.“4 Nor
can we tell what caused the removal to Egypt of a community of persons
with obvious Idumaean names who have been revealed to us in papyri.45

During his short period of rule, Aristobulus managed one enterprise.
The outcome in this case too was the circumcision of at least a part of a
defeated people. But Aristobulus looked northwards, to the upper
Galilee, a choice perhaps determined by the presence of a Jewish
population in this formally still Gentile territory. We learn from
Josephus (AJ x111.3 18) that some of the Ituraeans, who lived there and in
the Hermon area, were ordered to convert or to leave. Regrettably,
Josephus dependent as he is on his Greek informants, reduces the story
to this single episode, leaving us, as so often, to deduce the wider
context. It is remarkable that Strabo, the Greek writer whom Josephus
actually cites at this point, so far from being critical of the questionable
act, is prepared to praise Aristobulus for having served his nation well by
its enlargement.

The name of Alexander Jannaeus is not linked with any effective
conversions, although we do hear that his troops wrecked the Transjor-
danian city of Pella because the inhabitants rejected the customs of the
Jews (AJ xu1.397). That vague phrase may be taken as referring not to
mass Circumcision, with the threat of expulsion as alternative, but rather
to a formal Judaization of the city’s organs of government and the
transference of political control to a Jewish element.

Apart from Pella, Jannaeus overran numerous towns in the course ofa

43 On the conversion of Idumaea, see S. Schwartz, ‘Israel and the nations roundabout: I

Maccabees and the Hasmonean expansion’, J JS 42, 2 (1991) 16-38. See also Goodman 1987 (D 120)
189-94. “ For literature on Marisa, Schiirer 1973-87 (D 153) 11 4-5.

45 Rappaport 1977 (D 149).

“6 From Strabo’s lost Histories; he, in turn was, according to Josephus, citing Timagenes.
Strabo’s version is highly valued as a recognition of a new and wider concept of Jewish ethnicity by
S. J. D. Cohen, ‘Religion, ethnicity and ‘‘Hellenism’” in the emergence of Jewish identity in
Maccabean Palestine’, Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid Kingdom, ed. P. Bilde, T. Engberg-
Pedersen, L. Hannestad, J. Zahle (Aarhus, 1990) 204-24.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

294 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

stormy career, with dramatic advances and equally dramatic setbacks.
He has gone down in history as the destroyer of Greek cities, as a ruthless
opponent of paganism and indeed of Hellenism. Yet the list of his
conquests supplied by Josephus falls far short of warranting such a
reputation. It will be noted that the places in question are described by
Josephus not as Greek cities but merely as cities of ‘Syrians, Idumaeans
and Phoenicians’. What is involved is, simply, the achievement of Jewish
control over the remaining parts of Palestine and over its surrounds: the
coastal strip, Idumaea, Samaria, Carmel, the Peraea, Gaulanitis (the
Golan) and Moab. Certainly, recalcitrant cities were not spared brutality:
in the Jewish War, Josephus speaks of Jannaeus reducing Gaza, Raphia
and Anthedon to servitude. But this brutality was matched by that of the
other side, and seems to have been more a means of reducing opposition
or punishing the obdurate than a bid to judaize whole populations by the
sword. So, for example, Amathus in southern Jordan was demo-
lished because its ruler, Theodorus, would not meet Jannaeus in combat.
But there is good reason to believe also that allegations about the root
and branch destruction of cities by Jannaeus are exaggerated, since many
of those mentioned rapidly revived.4”7 The context of those statements in
Josephus shows that they originated in connexion with the subsequent
refoundation of the cities by Pompey and Gabinius in the wake of the
Roman occupation of 63 B.c.48 They derive, in fact from the post-
restoration propaganda, in which much had to be made of the achieve-
ments of the restorer. The same process has been noted in relation to
Alexander the Great’s activities at Gaza and at Tyre;#9 and Pompey, the
new Alexander, was to arrive as the saviour of the ‘Greeks’ of Syria and
of Palestine. The association of the cities with an image of Hellenism
belongs more to the ideology of the Roman conqueror than to the
mentality of the Jewish king, or, indeed, to the situation on the ground,
where, at this time, the typical city of the region did not much resemble a
Greek polis. The vacuum of recent years in international affairs had
given scope to local tyrants, and it was to them that Jannaeus was most
directly opposed. Both Zoilus, who ruled the coastal cities of Strato’s
Tower (later Caesarea) and of Dor, and Theodorus of Amathus (in
southern Jordan) yielded to the Jewish king in the first decade of the first
century B.c., after prolonged sieges. Archaeology suggests Zoilus’
towns to have been massively constructed forts, rather than laid-out
conurbations.5°

‘7 So Aryeh Kasher, in Hebrew and also id., Jews and Hellenistic Cities in Eretz-Israel: Relations of the
Jews in Eretz-Israel with the Hellenistic Cities during the Second Temple Period. (332 B.C.E.— 170 C.E.) (Texte
und Studien zum antiken Judentum 18) (Tubingen, 1990) 161-7. Against a view of the Hasmonean
campaigns amongst the ‘Greek’ cities as a conflict of cultures, see already, Tcherikover 1966 (D 162)

247-8. 48 Especially clear in the Jewish War version, BJ 1.156.
49 Jones 193 7(D 272) 237. % Levine 1974 (D 130); Raban 1987 (p 145); Stern 1985 (D157).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONQUEST AND JUDAIZATION 295

The wars of king Alexander Jannaeus seem dominated by pragmatic
rather than by religious considerations. The coastal strip and the east
bank of the Jordan, from Moab to the Golan, were now the central areas
of attention. These were zones in which his predecessors had established
a limited foothold. Now that Hyrcanus had dealt conclusively with the
Idumaeans and the Samaritans, his closest neighbours, the main thrust of
the campaigning was naturally carried further afield. Nevertheless, the
target was even now not one of single-minded expansion; the power of
the Jewish ruler was never sufficient for that. The main determining
factor of the advance was a complex interaction, scarcely avoidable, with
other rising powers in the region. With this came, perhaps, the lure of
new commercial possibilities.

Thus, Jannaeus’ opening venture was a major assault on the import-
ant port of Ptolemais (Akko). This went well, until it was cut short by the
intervention from Cyprus of the deposed Egyptian king, Ptolemy
Lathyrus. Jannaeus reached an accommodation with Lathyrus, which, in
turn, was soon nullified by Jannaeus’ own double-dealing: he was caught
in secret negotiations with Lathyrus’ mother, now ruling as Queen
Cleopatra IIT (AJ xi11.324-37). Lathyrus went on to inflict two major
defeats on Jannaeus, one in the lower Galilee and one in the Jordan
valley, and then to invade Judaea. Only Cleopatra’s military intervention
halted his advance. In Josephus’ narrative, Jannaeus’ initial assault on
Ptolemais remains unexplained; but it is not improbable that Lathyrus
had already before nursed hopes of using the city as a springboard into
Palestine and thence back to his own kingdom, while Jannaeus, for his
part, had seen the advantages of gratifying Cleopatra by forestalling her
son. Had Jannaeus merely been in search of a northern outlet to the sea,
to serve the Galilee, which had probably become predominantly Jewish
at the time of Aristobulus’ conquest of the Ituraeans, he would hardly
have moved so rapidly.5! Rather, then, Egypt orientated politics seem at
this stage to be the mainspring of action. The presence of two important
Egyptian Jews, members of the Oniad clan, among Cleopatra’s generals
(AJ x111.349) may go some way to explaining the role played by Jewish
Palestine in the fortunes of the warring Prolemies in these years. On the
other hand, Jannaeus, unlike his predecessors, does not seem to have
dealt with Rome, and there is no evidence of a renewal of their treaties.52

Lathyrus was eventually, though as it turned out temporarily,
deflected by Cleopatra, and some time before her death in 101 B.c., she
signed a treaty with Jannaeus at Scythopolis (AJ x111.355). That
observers were struck by the queen’s subsequent disengagement from

5! For the probability that Aristobulus took most of the Galilee: Schiirer 1973~86 (D 153) 11.9.
52 On Ananias and Helkias, see Stern 1981 (D 159) 37. On Jannaeus and Rome, Rappaport 1968 (D

148).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

296 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

the affairs of Palestine is revealed by the story in Josephus that Ananias,
one of her Oniad generals, flatly refused to co-operate with her unless she
undertook to leave the Jews alone. Whatever her real considerations, her
decision was an invitation to Jannaeus to move in and onwards, and in
the succeeding years he took not only the towns of the tyrants Zoilus and
Theodorus but also notably, Gadara (south east of the Sea of Galilee)
which was becoming a genuine centre of Greek culture, and Gaza.53 The
latter was the key to the southern sector of the coastal strip; it was also an
established ally and outlet of the Nabateans. Their trade was threatened
by Jannaeus, not only at Gaza, but also, and, perhaps, more so, by his
activities across the Jordan. During some eight or nine years the
Nabateans, with the help of the Seleucid monarch, Demetrius ITI, fought
with unexpected tenacity to retain their sphere of influence and in battle
they inflicted a serious defeat on the Hasmonean deep inside Judaea. But
in the last years of his reign (83-76), Jannaeus was able to redress the
balance, so that he finished master of most of what lay between the Golan
(in the north) and Moab (in the south), including such places of
importance as Gerasa and Gamala and, as already mentioned, Pella. The
country was secured by a network of virtually impregnable fortresses, of
which Josephus names three, Hyrcania, Alexandrium and Machaerus, all
of them overlooking Transjordanian territory (AJ xm1.417). At Masada,
Jannaeus’ coins were found in abundance.

The new areas were an integral part of the kingdom which, on his
death, the king bequeathed to his widow and successor, Salome
Alexandra. The queen retained her husband’s kingdom intact during her
nine years of rule (76-67), and she substantially increased the army; but
Judaea’s power across the Jordan was to prove short-lived, and to be
replaced almost immediately by a very different arrangement, the group
of cities founded or refounded by Pompey which together became
known as the Decapolis. The mixed character of these places had
probably persisted throughout, and the enhanced Jewish presence of the
Hasmonean period will have served in equal measure to hellenize the
Jews and to judaize the region.*4

VI. HELLENIZATION AND THE IMAGE OF THE HASMONEAN
RULER

So far from being anti-Greek, the political style of the later Hasmoneans
acquired a number of Hellenistic traits as time went on. Simon’s
accession, and the manner of his death had already shown something of
this. The Maccabee brothers had had Semitic nicknames (1 Macc. 2:1-5);

53 Kasher 1982 (D 125).
54 For eastern aspects of the culture of Decapolis towns, Bowsher 1987 (D 101).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

HELLENIZATION 297

their successors took on Greek personal names which overshadowed
their Hebrew ones. Aristobulus, also called Judas, even styled himself
Philhellene, according to one interpretation of Josephus’ words (AJ
xur.318). John Hyrcanus hired foreign mercenaries, and Jannaeus, and
later even Salome Alexandra, followed suit: because the local populace
was badly disposed, Cilicians and Pisidians (whom Josephus calls
‘Greeks’) were employed, together, perhaps with Thracians; and for the
battle near Shechem against Demetrius figures of 20,000 Jews and 6,200
mercenaries or of 10,000 Jews and 9,000 mercenaries are given.%
Jannaeus called himself king, as well as high priest, in a juxtaposition
unsanctioned by Jewish tradition; and he feasted in public with his
concubines in a manner perhaps not totally alien to David and Solomon
but unacceptable in the Jewish high priesthood (AJ x111.380). The
testamentary choice of his widow, Salome Alexandra, as successor, in
preference to either of his sons, also reveals Hellenistic influence.

Diplomatic ties and the social intercourse that went with them will
have led the Hasmonean rulers, as also their wealthier subjects, to a share
in the Graeco-oriental culture of their day. Contact with Jews from the
established Diaspora centres in Alexandria and in Asia Minor, above all
their regular presence in the capital, will have encouraged such develop-
ments. This is the period when the habit of pilgrimage on the three
agricultural festivals probably took root; this both expressed the
significance to Jews elsewhere of the Temple under its Hasmonean
management and provided a framework for a participation more active
than the mere contribution of the half-shekel for its upkeep. One of
Alexandrian Jewry’s most famous documents, the Letter of Aristeas to
Philocrates, which is essentially the legend of Ptolemy II Philadelphus’
commissioning of a Greek translation of the Bible by sages summoned
from Jerusalem, may well have been written towards the end of the
second century B.c., and sheds some light on Diaspora perceptions of
Jerusalem at the time. The city is idealized and schematized and its
scholars elevated, but little real knowledge of place or people emerges.*6
That the Oniads’ cult at Leontopolis in the Egyptian Delta was enough
of a rival to the Jerusalem Temple to explain the remoteness from
Jerusalem expressed by the authors of this document, is a possibility
which cannot be proved.

What little we know of Hasmonean architecture expresses the spirit of
the age clearly enough. Paradoxically, such features emerge first, and
most overtly, from a description, by none other than the militant author

55 We may explain in terms of reactions to these Thracian mercenaries Jannaeus’ nickname
‘Thrakidas’: Joseph. Aj x111.383; Syncellus 1 (ed. Dindorf), p. 558: so, Stern 1981 (D 159) 31. 53.
5¢ Collins 1983 (p 105) 81-4, with further bibliography on the Letter of Aristeas. On the unity of
Jewry at this period, see A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge,

1975) 114-16.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

298 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

of 1 Maccabees, of the tomb built by Simon for Jonathan in the ancestral
town of Modiin, with its seven pyramids surmounted by columns
bearing trophies of armour and carved ships, and its construction of
polished stone (1 Macc. 13:25—30). Scarcely anything now survives of
this great landmark, but the mixed idiom is one familiar to us in the
architecture of the region, notably in the Nabatean rock-cut tombs of
Petra. In Jerusalem, it is exemplified on a more intimate scale in the so-
called tomb of Jason, a burial associated not directly with the dynasty,
but, in all probability, with an aristocratic family of the time, over several
generations. There the style, if the monument has been correctly
reconstructed, has a pointed roof and a neat porch with Doric columns in
antis. Surviving fragments reveal that the Corinthian order also made its
appearance. Inside, graffiti appear to represent a naval battle, while an
epitaph in Greek and Aramaic, quite well preserved, urges the enjoy-
ment of life, of drink and of food. The naval battle recalls the ship motif
on the tomb at Modiin, and may possibly be associated with the
Hasmonean conquest of the coast.*”

The description of the dynasty’s mausoleum shows that its members
had pretensions to be builders on a large scale at an early stage. Many of
their projects were later lost in Herod’s even more ambitious schemes,
but in the case of the splendid winter palace in the Wadi Qelt (beside
Jericho) Jannaeus’ opulent edifice can still be seen as a separate unit. A
colonnaded swimming-pool surrounded by a promenade, aqueducts to
secure an ample water-supply and coloured frescoes within, bespeak
Hellenistic influence, enthusiastically adopted.58

Jason’s tomb is one proof, were proof needed, that at the very least
some external aspects of a Hellenized lifestyle spread beyond the royal
circle to the Jerusalem aristocracy. These new Hellenizers were not like
those of the era of Antiochus IV’s persecution, and there is no question
of their compromising the integrity of Judaism’s fundamental tenets.
But there is no doubt that aspects of Hellenization were capable of
offending significant elements in the population. We may deduce this by
the great care, which we have already noted, taken by the later
Hasmoneans over their self-presentation on their coinage. Hasmonean
coins remained image-free to the very end, always replacing the
customary ruler’s portrait with a second symbol. After John Hyrcanus,
the next to issue a major coinage was Alexander Jannaeus. Admittedly,
and not unexpectedly, he was less conservative, using Greek and
Aramaic, as well as Hebrew, and, on some types, openly advertising his
kingship, either in words or with symbols of star and diadem. Yet the
light weight of the coinage and the appearance of an undated lead issue at

57 Jason’s tomb: Rahmani 1967 (p 146), Avigad 1950-1 (Dp 91), and Benoit 1967 (D 98). Foerster
1978 (D 116); Peuch 1983 (D 142). 58 Netzer 1975 (D 138); see also Bartlett 1982 (D 96) 116ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

DIVISIONS 299

some point in his reign may point to difficulties in meeting the pressing
demands of troop payments, and reminds us that the Jewish public was
not the only target of the king’s self-promotion. For the Jews, or the
more traditional among them, he gave, on his Hebrew coins, his Hebrew
name, Jonathan, rather than Alexander; and there were others on which
he employed the old form of legend, devised by Hyrcanus, which
referred simply to the high priesthood and the Jewish fever. Of two types
of bulla or seal ascribed to Jannaeus, one names him (in palaeo-Hebrew
script) as ‘Jonathan high priest’ and one as ‘king’.59 The chronological
sequence of Jannaeus’ numerous dies is not established. It is, none the
less, tempting to associate with the major internal crisis of his middle
years a group of puzzling overstruck coins, where ‘Jonathan, the high
priest and the fever of the Jews’ has been made to obliterate the earlier
text on the obverse.®

VII. DIVISIONS IN JEWISH THOUGHT AND SOCIETY

The Hasmoneans may have acted on behalf of the people, but this did not
mean that their rule was acceptable to all. The shifting patterns of
support and opposition to the ruling house are now in large part lost to
us. We are, however, able, by combining with caution reports in
Josephus, recollections in the Talmudic literature and allusions in the
Qumran texts, to form some impression of the connexions between
various groupings and political events. In a more general sense, the
emergence of a military monarchy was bound to have large-scale social
and religious repercussions in a tight-knit society, as that of Judaea had
been. The formation of sects which dissociated themselves to a greater or
a lesser extent from other Jews, begun under the impact of earlier
pressures, was undoubtedly accelerated by the political changes of our
period.

Even before the revolt of the Maccabees, the issue of Greek influence
had brought about deep internal hostilities. It is worth remembering that
the high priestly house which had dominated since the time of Alex-
ander, that of Onias (descended from Zadok), had taken itself into
Egyptian exile, during the ‘Hellenistic reform’ crisis. There, as has
already been mentioned, they had gone so far as to construct with
Ptolemaic consent, on land at Leontopolis, a temple which must in some
sense have paralleled that of Jerusalem. This temple, although it can
hardly have commanded the allegiance of Egyptian Jewry as a whole,
lasted for several centuries and had sufficient importance for Vespasian

59 Avigad 1975 (D 92).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

300 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

to find it necessary to destroy it in the aftermath of suppressing the
Jewish revolt of a.p. 66-74.

Throughout the period of the Maccabean revolt, a different party, that
of the Hellenizing Jews, had remained loyal to the Seleucids and never
found an accommodation with the Maccabean party. By 165 B.c.
too, another highly characteristic reaction had manifested itself, one in
which a select group isolated itself in the interests of piety or purity. A
band of /asidim (righteous persons) is described as joining Judas; they
allowed themselves to be slaughtered rather than desecrate the Sabbath
by taking up arms. The survivors soon afterwards broke with Judas and
were ill-advised enough to seek a reconcilation with the high priest
Alcimus, the untrustworthy appointee of Antiochus V.6 Thus, even
pursuers of purity did not always avoid the political arena. As a group
they then disappeared from history, but they are often regarded as the
ideological progenitors of one of the major tendencies in Second Temple
Judaism, sometimes of Pharisaism, or, more often of such circles as
fostered eschatological speculation and authored apocalypses, among
whom was the Qumran sect. An earlier, Mesopotamian origin, seems,
however, more probable for the characteristic modes of thought of
Jewish apocalypse.®

Be that as it may, the groupings which dominated the ensuing era are
differently delineated by Josephus. It is in connexion with the rule of
Jonathan that he first mentions the three major divisions, which he calls
hatresets (sects) or ‘philosophies’, that were in existence ‘at this time’ — the
Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes; and he then offers a brief
account of them (AJ xi.171-3). We may take it, therefore, that
Josephus’ view, derived perhaps from tradition, was that these group-
ings had come into their own during the early Hasmonean period; and
this is wholly plausible. It isa pity that Josephus then goes on to describe
the bone of contention between them in terms which have nothing to do
with the context from which they emerged. But this is because he has
chosen at this point to focus on what might interest his Greek readers:
contrasting opinions on fate and free will, and on the after-life (in which
the Sadducees did not believe) would evoke for readers familiar debates
in the philosophical schools. Josephus has it that the Sadducees regarded
man as free to make his own choices, while the Essenes insisted on an all-
powerful destiny and the Pharisees allowed for both fate and free will in

61 Josephus, BJ 1.31~3; vit.q26—36; AJ x11.387-8; x111.62-73, 285; XIV.131-2; xx.235-7; Ap.
11.49-56. Josephus is inconsistent as to the foundation date. See Delcor 1968 (p 110); Hayward 1982
(D 122).

62 On the dasidim, Hengel 1974 (p 123) ch. 6, esp. 175-80; but the three references in 1 and 2 Macc.
(1 Macc. 2:42; 1 Macc. 7:12f; 2 Macc. 14:6) do not allow more than speculation as to the character of
the grouping. For a radical denial that asidim were a cohesive group at all, Davies 1977 (D 107).

63 Stone 1982 (D 160) ch. 5, 37-4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

DIVISIONS 301

their system. This is, in fact, one of several doctrinal differences brought
to the fore in his digressions.%

Many scholars believe that the evidence from Qumran bears witness
to a more direct (though enigmatically expressed) response to contem-
porary affairs, on the part, at least, of the community who possessed the
scrolls found in the caves near that site. In the present state of research
there are few who would deny the identification of this community as a
branch of the Essene sect. The specifically sectarian documents found in
the Qumran library (which include, in fact, some of the best known of all
the Dead Sea Scrolls) energetically castigate the sect’s enemies and
emphatically justify its members’ withdrawal from the main body of the
nation. None of the encoded allusions to persons, times or places is
unequivocal. But in any case, even without a wholly secure chronology,
this literature reveals much of the nature of religious dissension in the
Jewish society of its time and of the range of sectarian attitudes to which
this gave rise.

The documents reveal that 390 years after the exile to Babylon, they, a
‘plant root’, sprung from ‘Aaron and Israel’, made it their purpose to cast
off the iniquity around them in what they perceived as an ‘age of wrath’.
After they had groped ‘like blind men’ for twenty years (the round
number looks like a symbolic one), the drama began to unfold with the
appearance of the “Teacher of Righteousness’, a certain priest, who made
them understand the nature of the gulf between themselves and that
“congregation of traitors’ which was firmly set in its unacceptable ways.
By this time, the public evils had greatly increased, under the influence of
a ‘scoffer’, who dealt in lies, abolished the moral boundaries and misled
the people, by detaching them from the traditions of their forefathers,
thus calling forth on them all the curses contained in the Covenant. His
followers, ‘seekers of smooth things’, turned on the righteous few,
persecuting and killing them.®5 If we are also to attach to the Teacher of
Righteousness the psalms of thanksgiving from the somewhat damaged
Hymns Scroll, then it emerges that his own former friends and
companions had been among those who rebelled.66 There was one
powerful persecutor, a ‘Wicked Priest’, who, though ‘called by the name
of truth when he first arose’, had betrayed God and defiled himself and
the cult, out of greed and pride, so as to ‘build a city of vanity with
blood’, and to rob the poor of their possessions. He had in the end been
put to death by his enemies.6? The elect saw themselves not only as

On Josephus’ sects, see p. 278, n. 7.

65 This history underlies the Damascus Document (CD) 1-8. On the Teacher’s priesthood:
Commentaries on Psalms (4QPs), 37.2.19 and 3.15. For Qumran documents see Lohse 1971 (D 132)
and Vermes 1987 (D 166). 6 Hymns (Hodayoth, 1QH), 9 and 10.

67 Commentary on Habakkuk (1QpHab), 7,10,12. For Qumran documents see Lohse 1971 (D
132) and Vermes 1987 (D 166).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

302 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

guardians of the Law, but as priests, ‘sons of Zadok’, who were
ultimately to protect the Temple from the utter defilement which those
in charge had wrought in it. However, they had been driven fora period
into exile, described, again, it would seem, symbolically, as located in
Damascus. There they lived a life based upon the New Covenant,
interpreting the Law punctiliously, in its ritual and its compassionate
requirements. Living in perfect purity, they had to remain separate from
the community and, especially, according to the Damascus Document,
to avoid all contact with the Temple cult as it existed. They looked
forward to the imminent punishment of the traitors and rebels and to
their own salvation.®

It has been observed that the date of 390 years from the exile, even if
we take it as an approximation accommodated to traditional reckonings,
takes us to the beginning of the Hellenizing crisis, early in the second
century. The withdrawal to ‘Damascus’ — that is to say, perhaps, to
Qumran and similar places beside the Dead Sea® — would seem, then, to
happen at about the time of the Hellenistic reform in Jerusalem. An
identification of the Wicked Priest with Jonathan the Hasmonean, who
did indeed die at the hands of his Gentile enemies, is plausible.” The
archaeological evidence offered by the community’s installations at
Qumran cannot confirm this chronology but is consistent with it to the
extent of revealing one stratum which precedes that of the Hyrcanu's—
Jannaeus era.”! That there is no known historical personage with whom
we can identify the Teacher of Righteousness is not wholly surprising:
the bitter quarrels which were all-important to the history of the sect had
no real claim to attention in the Hasmonean record; and both Teacher
and followers had conveniently taken themselves out of sight of
Jerusalem, probably without causing much disruption to public life.
This should not, of course, stand in the way of our recognizing the
historical importance of their action.

The sect’s abhorrence of the ruling house did not come to an end with
the withdrawal from Jerusalem; but when the Commentary on Nahum
points the finger at a peculiarly cruel ruler, seemingly Jannaeus, who is
dubbed ‘the furious young lion’, it is made clear that the lion’s prey
consisted not, now, of the Qumran sectaries, but, instead, of the ‘seekers
of smooth things’, reasonably interpreted as the Pharisees.72 Our

6 Davies 1982 (D 108). That Essenes did, however, at times send offerings to Jerusalem is a
contention made by Philip Callaway in The History of the Qumran Commrunity (Sheffield 1988).

689 Bar-Adon 1977 (D 94).

7% D. Dimant in Stone 1984 (D 161) 542-7, explains in brief the identification and its
consequences. See p. 542 n. 282, for its main supporters and note especially, Vermes 1987 (D 166)
137-62; éd. 1981 (D 164). Attempts to shake the foundations of this methodology have not so far
succeeded.

7 Period 1a: De Vaux 1973 (D 112); Laperrousaz 1976 (D 129); Davies 1982 (D 109) 4off.

” Commentary on Nahum (4QPNah) 2 and 3. For Qumran documents see Lohse 1971 (D 132)
and Vermes 1987 (D 166).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

DIVISIONS 303

damaged text seems to suggest that the crucifixion of the seekers by the
king, by way of reprisal, shocked the sect, and added a new note of
revulsion to their long-standing criticism of the Hasmoneans for the
familiar vices of accumulating wealth, abusing power and polluting all
that was holy. It is noteworthy that, even from their exile, these Essenes
kept an eye on Jerusalem; indeed, the Nahum Commentary’s public
awareness extends to a unique reference to the doings of a king
Antiochus (apparently Epiphanes) and a king Demetrius (most likely
Jannaeus’ adversary, Demetrius ITI). In this respect, the sectaries cannot
be described as disengaged. Nor did the sad fate of the ‘seekers of smooth
things’ under Jannaeus (if indeed he was the culprit) reduce any of the
sectaries’ animus against that group: the hatred continued.”

In ‘exile’ the Essenes formulated their own elaborate rules for a
monastic lifestyle, based ona rigid hierarchy and a revised calendar, and
centred upon purity and devotional practice.”4 Yet this did not entail
their rejection of the central institutions of Jewish corporate life; they
merely yearned for them to be faithfully administered according to the
precepts of the Law. They interpreted that Law rigorously and with their
own peculiar emphases; but the starting-point and general principles of
that reading would probably have found a fair measure of agreement
within Israel. It isa mark of this that the sect felt it worthwhile to explain
and justify its self-separation. A document of extreme interest, not yet
officially published, sets out points of difference in terms of halakhah
(legal observance); and the emphasis, in the surviving part, falls on the
Temple regime and on the purity of the entire Holy City.75> The better
known, and longer, Temple Scroll presents the Temple legislation from
the Pentateuch with a number of additions, and within this context it
finds room for a theory of Jewish kingship. Here a Bible-based reaction
to the Hasmonean style of rule stands out plainly (the document is most
usually dated, from its description of the Jewish monarch, to the period
of Hyrcanus): the king must be Jewish; he must not have many horses;
he must not make war in Egypt; he must not be polygamous; he must not
acquire much silver and gold; his army must consist of God-fearers and
is to protect him against foreigners; he must make all decisions in
consultation witha council of twelve Israelites, twelve priests and twelve
Levites; he must marry a Jewish wife; his conduct in war must follow
certain set patterns and must be preceded by a consultation with the high
priest of the Urim and Thummim. The conclusion is a resounding
warning, whose contemporary meaning is undeniable: ‘The king whose
heart and eyes have gone astray from my commandments shall never

73 On the Hasmoneans, cf. also the ‘last priest’ in the Habakkuk commentary (1QpHab), 9.4.7. A
re-examination of this historical reconstruction in P. R. Callaway, The History of the Qumran
Community (Sheffield, 1988). ™ Vermes 1987 (D 166) 87-115.

78 Qimron and Strugnell 1985 (D 144).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

304 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

have one to sit on the throne of his fathers, for I will cut off his posterity
for ever so that it shall no more rule over Israel. But if he walk after my
rules and keep my commandments and do that which is correct and good
before me, no heir to the throne of the kingdom of Israel shall be cut off
from among his sons for ever.’”6

The Qumran texts shed direct light on the reactions of certain pious
Jews to political change in Judaea, and, for all the continuing uncertain-
ties, they cannot fail to claim a central position in any modern account of
the Judaism of the second and first centuries B.c. They lend a new
meaning to what we read of the Essenes in Josephus and other sources,
not least by revealing how religious and political reactions might have
combined in their origins. It is reasonable to suppose that sectarianism
developed out of disagreements over political and social change, but that
these disagreements were expressed largely in religious terms, and were
then crystallized and sharpened through increasingly divergent interpre-
tations of practice and belief.

From Philo and from Josephus, both of whom describe the Essene
lifestyle in some detail,”” we learn that it was possible to follow the sect’s
way of life without making for the wilderness. Communities were to be
found in various towns of Judaea, or at any rate, close beside them.
According to one statement of Josephus (who should have known, since
he had for a time attached himself to the sect), there existed also some
married Essenes. Still, whatever the mitigations, self-separation into a
sealed environment, where every aspect of personal life was rigidly
regulated, lay at the heart of the system. And this regulation did not
diminish in intensity over time, even though variations in specific rules
did occur and are reflected in the different Qumran Rules Documents.78

In the case of the Qumran Essenes, we may reasonably speak ofa sect.
The nature of the other major groupings within Judaism is in some ways
even more elusive. The name of the Pharisees derives from a Hebrew
vord which means ‘to separate’, and there is Mishnaic evidence that the
pursuit of ritual purity and strict tithing within enclosed table-fellow-
ships (Aavuroth) was a central part of their concerns.” Yet their activities
lad a political dimension at an early stage, as we have seen; and since,
inlike the Essenes, they did not turn their backs on Jerusalem, to

% Temple Scroll (11QT), 56-9; Hengel, Charlesworth and Mendels 1986 (p 124) arguing for a
ate in the reign of Jannaeus. 7 Bj 11.119; Philo, Apol. 1ff, Quod omnis probus, 76ff.

78 A high level of overall consistency emerges from Beall’s comparative material: 1988 (D 97).
9 Pharisaic ascendancy: Joseph. AJ x111.288; 298, with the possibility however, of anachronism
tat least exaggeration, in a work written in the 90s A.D., when the successors of the Pharisees were
ertainly becoming dominant in Palestine. Oral law: AJ x1t.297, and see E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law
tom Jesus to the Mishnab (London and Philadelphia, 1990) 97-130. On the Pharisees generally, see
chiirer 1973-87 (D 153) 11 388-403. On table-fellowships: Neusner 1960 (D 139); fd. 1973 (D 140)
4-71.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

DIVISIONS 305

criticize from afar, it is not surprising that they were regularly involved
in direct opposition to the rulers. It is perhaps also understandable, in the
light of this opposition, that Pharisaic influence should have spread
through society. Josephus claims that before a.D. 70 they had won wide
popularity and that their interpretations, as embodied in an Oral Law
supplementing the Torah, dominated public practice. Throughout the
Hasmonean period, that influence was in the making.

The Sadducees, of whom we know the least, probably had already at
this time the aristocratic character and links with the top echelons of the
priesthood which were later their hallmark. Their name associated them
with the lineage of Zadok the Priest. It is commonly held that they
supported the ruling house and supplied many of its courtiers and
agents. Even if this be true, there is no reason to suppose that, now or ata
later date, all such individuals were in any sense Sadducees, or, on the
other hand, to deny that there were certain more scholarly elements
within Sadduceeism capable of interesting themselves in the questions of
doctrine by which Josephus likes to define them and which Talmudic
texts also ascribe to them.89 We have no conception of the numbers
involved in any of the groups at any period. Nor can we say to what
extent the main groups either subsumed or coexisted with smaller
sectarian units, as was certainly to be the case in the first century A.D.

The dynasty, whose authority would always depend on its beginnings
as Israel’s saviour, showed understandable reluctance to break irrevoca-
bly with those who stood for piety and purity. Hyrcanus was in his early
days a pupil and favourite of the Pharisees (AJ x111.289). His quarrel
with them is couched in an anecdote which figures also in the Talmud.
The core of this story is the Pharisaic demand, made, it is told, at a
banquet given by the ruler, that Hyrcanus give up the high priesthood
and retain the temporal leadership on its own.®! The underlying reason
for the demand could be that the two functions had traditionally been
separated, or else that the Hasmonean house lacked the correct, Zadokite
descent, or, again, that Hyrcanus’ outward-looking activities were
polluting the Temple. Josephus reports drastic results: Hyrcanus can-
celled the Pharisees’ religious ordinances (to which he had evidently
accorded binding force), punished their followers, and took up with the

80 Joseph. AJ x111.282; association with high birth or wealth, AJ x11.298; xvitt.17 (saying that
they are few). See Schiirer 1973-87 (D 153) 11 goq—14.

81 AJ xi1.289-97; Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 66a, with a mistaken ascription to Jannaeus.
On the Talmudic tradition, Derenbourg, Essai sur (histoire et la géographie de la Palestine, (Paris, 1867)
79-80; on the legal interpretation, Klausner in Schalit 1976 (D 152) 270-4. For scepticism of
Josephus’ rupture story, see S. Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees (Leiden, 1991) 213-30.
Hyrcanus’ appearance in early rabbinic tradition as the instigator of certain reforms in tithing and
sacrificial practice cannot either support or invalidate the rupture tradition: J. Sievers, The
Hasmoneans and their Supporters from Mattathias to the Death of Jobn Hyrcanus 1 (South Florida Studies in
the History of Judaism 6) (Atlanta, 1990) 150-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

306 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

Sadducees. Josephus, furthermore, believed that the breach was never
healed. Yet the hazy recollections of this ruler in Talmudic literature are
favourable, and Josephus himself proceeds to sum him up as a man both
fortunate and charismatic. It may well be that the image of special
spirituality was one adopted by Hyrcanus to counter Pharisaic disappro-
val, and that the historian reflects this projection when he says that
Hyrcanus was honoured by God in three separate ways: with the
leadership, with the high priesthood and with a prophet’s power to make
predictions (BJ 1.68—9; AJ x111.300). This last ability was exemplified in
an episode which clearly gained widespread currency, for it is found in
both Josephus and various Talmudic texts. It tells how Hyrcanus was
busy about his high priestly duties when a voice from above (bath-qol)
brought him the news of his sons’ victory over Antiochus Cyzicenus. We
observe that all three of Hyrcanus’ roles are neatly united in this tale; but
the religious capacity has pride of place.

Another hint of a religious division between ruler and people is
perhaps to be detected in the letter which opens 2 Maccabees (see above,
n. 3), where ‘the brethren, the Jews in Jerusalem and throughout the
land of Judaea’ urge the Jews of Egypt to celebrate with vigour the
festival commemorating the re-establishment of the Temple cult after
the pollution by Jason, which had occurred in the month of Kislev over
thirty years earlier. The ruler is not party to the letter, and the victor,
Judas, the Maccabee, is not mentioned in it. But we have no basis for
determining the nature of the anti-Hasmonean circles which may have
produced the letter, and it must be remembered that these circles were
not responsible for the historical work to which the letter was attached.

With Alexander Jannaeus, the conflicts intensified greatly and gave
rise to mass slaughter. This time, not the Pharisees but the Jewish masses
in general are given as the king’s opponents, and the reconstruction
which puts the Pharisees at the forefront of the reaction rests on no more
than a plausible conjecture. To accept this, however, is not to accept the
terms of a dichotomy created by modern scholarship, in which it is
supposed that to follow Josephus is to relegate the Pharisees (and the
Sadducees too) to being a political and nota religious ‘party’ and that, to
avoid this unacceptable conclusion, Josephus’ portrayal should be
rejected. The Talmudic accounts of the flight of Simon ben Shetah, one
of the leading scholars of the era, may go some way to confirm that
Jannaeus’ quarrel was primarily with elements rigorous about the Law,
both written and oral, as we know the Pharisees to have been, and to
show that politics and religion were not distinguishable spheres of
activity. At this time, objections seem, once again, to have been directed
at the Hasmonean tenure of the high priesthood; in addition, since one

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

DIVISIONS 307

popular outburst took the form of pelting of the king with the citrons
carried at the Festival of Tabernacles, there would appear also to have
been controversies about his holy-day observances.® For the rest, our
evidence is too limited to allow us to understand how the slaughter of
6,000 citizens could follow from the pelting, or what could have been the
character of the ensuing troubles in which, between about go and 85 B.c.,
50,000 people perished, while their surviving associates had to seek the
protection of King Demetrius III (Eukairos). A further 6,000 of his
subjects apparently changed sides twice before Jannaeus took his most
appalling revenge of all, crucifying 800 of them in public and massacring
their wives and children while, it was said, he feasted openly with his
concubines. That this act sent ripples even to Qumran is hardly
surprising. Josephus’ assurance that the king, having disposed of all the
troublemakers, ‘reigned thereafter in complete tranquillity’ (AJ
XIII. 383), is scarcely believable, though he did recover somewhat from
the military setbacks which, as we have described, also accompanied his
middle years, and which, no doubt, had been partly a consequence of the
uprising within his own borders.

There is no satisfactory way for us to check Josephus’ version of these
events, however much we may suspect him of exaggeration. Yet even
the dreadful deeds he describes did not finally rupture the link between
the Pharisees and the dynasty. Jannaeus, with striking pragmatism,
concluded from his own extensive experience that the Pharisees were
now a power in the land, without whose co-operation one could not
govern securely. He allegedly left his widow and successor, the Queen
Salome Alexandra, with the remarkable instructions to placate them
instantly and to share power with them in the future. These concessions
made them prepared, apparently, to go so far as honouring the corpse of
Jannaeus.

Thus, during Alexandra’s nine-year rule, Pharisees were thought to
have come to dominate public life. Talmudic tradition remembered the
reign with affection, valuing it especially as the heyday of Simon son of
Shetah. But the Pharisees became, in their turn, objects of public
resentment. Elements hostile to them rallied to the side of Alexandra’s
younger son, Aristobulus, and during her last illness they organized
themselves to take over the country. His supporters included much of
the priesthood (AJ xiv.24), and it was that show of violence which
persuaded the elder brother, Hyrcanus, formally to cede the throne to
the younger shortly after the queen’s death. However, under the impact

82 ‘Talmudic legends about Simon ben Shetah often make him Jannaeus’ brother-in-law. Efron
1987 (D 114) 143-218, proposes a critical evaluation. On the pelting, Joseph. AJ x1t.372-3; BJ 1.88.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

308 8b. THE JEWS UNDER HASMONEAN RULE

of the Roman presence in the area and of his Idumaean adviser, Antipater
(the father of Herod the Great), Hyrcanus’ claim was soon revived and
was eventually endorsed by Pompey when he arrived.

So it was that, in the latter years of the Hasmoneans, the most
prominent of the divisions in Judaism, that between the Pharisees and
the Sadducees, dominated Jerusalem and, if Josephus is to be believed,
tore the state apart. Questions of power and of government were central
to that dispute. There had been strong reactions to such issues from the
early days, in the shape of the Aasidim and of the Essenes and, in all
probability, of similar groups about which we know nothing. But as the
dynasty grew in worldliness and in ruthlessness, it aroused yet wider
antagonisms. And in the end, perhaps under the influence of other
Hellenistic monarchies, it fell prey itself to succession disputes. Under
such pressures, the personal weaknesses of Hyrcanus and Aristobolus
proved disastrous.

We cannot judge which sector of the population it was that presented
itself to Pompey at Damascus, in the spring of 63 B.c., and requested the
restoration of the traditional system of rule under a high priest (AJ
xIv.41). Josephus describes this as the view of the ‘nation’, and it is
worth remembering that much of the population may well not have been
aligned with any of the major sects. Whatever the case, the sad day had
arrived when these people preferred to deal with Rome than with either
of their own aspiring rulers. Those hopes in a solution from the outside
very rapidly faded, however, once Pompey had, after a month of siege,
wrested the Temple Mount from the forces of Aristobulus, had marched
into the Holy of Holies, had imposed Roman tribute and had taken many
into slavery.

The Psalms of Solomon, preserved among the Apocrypha and
Pseudepigrapha in the Christian Church, express the horror of the pious
at that act of desecration. The psalms voice the feelings of those people
who had been repelled, like the Qumran settlers, by the greed, lawless-
ness and arrogance of their own leaders. Here, too, we read of some who
had even welcomed Pompey, the invader from the West, ‘a man alien to
our race’. But disillusion had soon left them with Messianism as their
only refuge, when they had seen the conqueror do in Jerusalem ‘all the
things that the Gentiles do for the gods in their cities’, and recoiled while
‘Gentile foreigners went up to your place of sacrifice; they arrogantly
trampled it with their sandals.’83 The door had been opened to Pompey
in equal measure by the feud between the princes, both of whom had
courted him with gifts, and by the naiveté of the populace. Nevertheless,

83 Psalm 2. Charlesworth 1985 (p 103) 11.65 1-2. Efron’s rejection (p 114 ch. 6) of the accepted
association between the Psalms and Pompey, in favour of a Christian context, has not proved
persuasive.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

DIVISIONS 309

we may suggest that, even had the advancing Romans met with a united
people, the outcome could, in the long run, hardly have been very
different.

The Pompeian settlement of Palestine and the subsequent partition of
Judaea by Gabinius are best described elsewhere, in the context of
Rome’s eastern policies.*4

% See above, ch. 82, pp. 260-2, 272-3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 8¢

EGYPT, 146-31 B.c.

DOROTHY J. THOMPSON

I. THE LATER PTOLEMIES

In Egypt 146 B.c., the year of the destruction of Corinth and Carthage,
was the last full year in the life of Ptolemy VI Philometor, who died
fighting in Syria in the following autumn. Apart from a brief period of
joint reign (170-164 B.c.) when Egypt had been seriously threatened by
Antiochus IV and when Rome, in July 168, first actively interfered in the
affairs of the Ptolemies (Vol. vit? 342-4), the two sons of Epiphanes
(Philometor and Euergetes IT) had conspicuously failed to co-operate.
Similar tensions within the ruling house with all the resultant conflict,
upheaval and lack of direction were to be a feature of the last century of
Ptolemaic rule.

In 145 the younger son of Epiphanes was summoned by the people
home from Cyrene where he had ruled in semi-exile. Returning via
Cyprus, whence a well-timed amnesty decree! was aimed to strengthen
his acceptability, Euergetes II now took his brother’s widow as his wife.
Supported only by the Jews and perhaps the intellectuals of the city,
Cleopatra II had earlier pressed the claims of her son Ptolemy VII Neos
Philopator. The boy was speedily liquidated by his uncle, in her arms on
his mother’s wedding-day according to one rhetorical account; Ptolemy
VIII Euergetes II then claimed the succession and consummated his
marriage. His traditional coronation at Memphis in 144 was timed to
coincide with the birth of his new wife’s child, suitably named Mem-
phites. Two years later, together with his wife, Euergetes II voyaged
south and on 10 September 142 consecrated the great Horus temple at
Edfu.? The king who had earlier relied on the Alexandrian mob was
apparently searching for wider support amongst the population of
Egypt.

In looking beyond the Greek capital on the Mediterranean, in
recognizing the importance of the ceremonial role of the king, and in
presenting himself as traditional protector of the land of Egypt and its
people, Euergetes IT followed the examples of his father and of his elder

1 COrdP tol 41-2. 2 Diod. xxx11.13; Cauville and Devauchelle 1984 (D 178) 39.

310

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE LATER PTOLEMIES 311

brother. For the Egyptian population he sought the role of pharaoh.
However, he was not respected by the Alexandrian Greeks or by visiting
Romans who decried his monstrous paunch (he was disrespectfully
known as Physcon, Pot-belly), his dress and lifestyle; his persecutions
and his personal predilections resulted in a uniformly hostile reception
by the classical commentators.3 In ¢.140 he took as a second wife his niece
Cleopatra III, daughter of his first wife and of his late brother,
Philometor. The jealous struggles of the two Cleopatras, mother and
daughter, now began in earnest, and the attempted cozp of Philometor’s
army officer Galaistes is but one sign of the simmering unrest.* The open
persecution of the Greeks of Alexandria with the subsequent dispersal of
the intelligentsia had probably started soon after his return to power.
Such evil acts of individual rulers dominate the historiography of the
period.5 The evidence of the papyri, being scrappy and scattered in its
survival, occasionally illuminates the scene but cannot supply the
political framework which is missing from the record.

In 140/39 B.c. a Roman embassy headed by P. Cornelius Scipio
Aemilianus, together with Spurius Mummius and L. Caecilius Metellus
Calvus visited Alexandria on an eastern fact-finding mission. This may
have been the occasion of Polybius’ visit to the country. His unattractive
picture of the divisions in Alexandria — ignoring the Jews of the city he
divided the population there into Egyptians, unruly mercenaries and the
Greek Alexandrians — may be matched by a Stoic account of the
overweight and flimsily dressed ruler who needed Scipio’s arm for
support. The sumptuousness of the palace and of the royal entertainment
did not make a favourable impression. Escorted upriver to Memphis on
the regular tourist round, the Romans admired the natural resources of
the kingdom which could be so great, if only rulers worthy of it could be
found.®

The later Prolemies did not provide such leadership. Towards the end
of the decade, by November 132, Euergetes’ personal problems came
into the open with the outbreak of a bitter civil war between the king
with his second wife Cleopatra III and her mother, his first wife,
Cleopatra ITI.? In Egypt Cleopatra II took command of the troops and
introduced a new system of dating and cult titles. Euergetes, who was
still minting in Alexandria in late September 131,8 now fled to Cyprus

3 Heinen 1983 (D 196) discusses the sources. 4 Diod. xxx111.20, 22.

5 Polyb. xxxrv.14.6-8; Jac. FGrH 270 F 9, Menecles of Barca; Diod. xxxtt.6; Val. Max.
Ix.2.ext.5; Just. Epit. xxxvii.8.2—-4.

6 Polyb. xxxiv.14.1-5; Ath. x11.549d-e, probably Panaetius rather than Posidonius; Diod.
XXXIIT.28b. 1-3.

7 The demotic Malcolm papyrus, Pond 10384 (11 Nov. 132 B.c.), had Cleopatra III without her
mother in the dating formula (information from C. J. Martin, who is to publish this papyrus).

8 Merkholm 1975 (B 207) 10-11; still in Egypt in October 131, PLeid 373 a+ UPZ 128 (30
October 131 B.c.), in Liddeckens 1960 (D 208) 93-5 Urk. 37.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

312

ARABIA

FAYUM
SCORN, stiaiatge
Theadelphias
Kerkeosiris« <
Tebtunis* 2

x
s, .

el-Hiba

& erniba

Oxyrhynchus+

Hermopolis

Lycopolis
Assiut

Ptolemais*
t.
eo

Dendera Leuces,
imen
THEBAID (OPUS

Thebes ¢ Karnak
Hermonthis(Armant)y"Luxor
Pathyris (Gebelen) ! Crocodilopolis
Latopolis +
Apollonopolis Magna 4 EDFU

Kom Ombo

Elephantine f >¥o"®

Land over 1000 metres
nae Modern place-names underlined
290 km
0 100 miles

11 Egypt

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE LATER PTOLEMIES 313

where he had murdered Memphites, his son by Cleopatra II. These
troubles (ameixia) are used as a key point in the later land surveys of
Kerkeosiris in the South Fayum and in the Heracleopolite nomos; land
grants were divided into those made up to Year 39 (132/1 B.c.) and those
from Year go (131/30 B.C.).9 In her husband’s absence the papyri suggest
that Cleopatra enjoyed some success even as far south as the Thebaid, but
Euergetes II soon returned to reside in the old Egyptian capital of
Memphis. With an Egyptian military leader, Paos, in the Thebaid, the
king seems largely to have relied on native support. As so often when
trouble broke out in Alexandria, elsewhere in Egypt the age-old rivalries
surfaced in many forms. The conflicts which resulted from the instability
of Ptolemaic rule might show racial, regional, religious and economic
aspects. The breakaway tendency of Thebes and the south may be seen in
the person of Harsiesis, a native ruler of short duration who profited
from royal unrest to establish partial control in Thebes, the home of
Amon.!° ‘The Potter’s Oracle’, an apocalyptic work in Greek most
probably based on a demotic original, may date from these years.
Following a period of assorted disasters — famine, murder, the collapse
of the moral order, oppression and civil war — all would again be well
with the Greek power finally destroyed. The Egyptian gods would be
restored to Memphis; the city on the coast would be deserted."

By April 129 Euergetes was once again sufficiently in control to begin
to settle his Egyptian troops. In the forty-first year of his reign (130/29)
the South Fayum village of Kerkeosiris received the first settlement
there of Egyptian troops — eight cavalrymen (one with 30 arourai (7.5
hectares) and seven with 20 arourai (5 hectares)) and thirty infantrymen
with 7 arourai (1.75 hectares). In close connexion with these military land
grants 130 arourai of good cultivable land were dedicated to Soknebtunis
(the local crocodile-god Souchos, lord of Tebtunis, a neighbouring
town). Troops were thus rewarded, native cults encouraged and royal
control upheld. This native settlement was made on land earlier
belonging to substantial Greek cleruchs; immigrants were giving way to
Egyptians.

Yet in the south the whole decade is marked by sporadic violence and
banditry. The small-scale raids on the local dykes of Crocodilopolis by
villagers from the neighbouring area of Hermonthis at the time of the
Nile flood in September 123 typify this unrest. The priests of Souchos
complained to a local official that the land has gone unsown; both their
temple and the royal interest suffer.!2 How far such local disputes, the

9 PTebt 60.67, 90; BGU 2441.119.

10 Koenen 1959 (D 199).

't Koenen 1970 (D 201); Lloyd 1982 (D 206); cf Johnson 1984 (D 197) 116-21; Tait 1977 (D 234)
45~8 for a (later) demotic version. 12 WChrest 11.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

314 8¢. EGYPT, 146-31 B.C.

replay of age-old rivalries, derive directly from the political instability of
the period is unknown. What is clear is that when political control from
Alexandria was weak, all forms of abuse flourished. When on 28 April
118 the royal rulers, Euergetes II and his two queens, Cleopatras II and
III, uneasily reconciled since 124, issued a decree of amnesty, its scope
was far-reaching.'3 With the aim of restoring peace those who had fled
were encouraged to return home. Royal generosity was coupled with an
attempt to control the abuse of official power. Debts to the crown and all
forms of arrears were remitted, whilst crown farmers, revenue-workers,
beekeepers and textile-workers were protected in their professions.
What had become the regular concessions were made to the temples and
to their priests. The rights of military settlers (cleruchs) were increased.
The summary arrest and imprisonment of individuals was limited and at
all levels officials were restrained and controlled: no illegal levies at the
customs-posts (or elsewhere), no bribes and requisitioning. Billeting
was severely constrained and, following the troubles, the reconstruction
of both temples and private housing was endorsed; planting and
agriculture were encouraged. Such decrees of beneficence and bounty
were well known in Egypt though this is the most comprehensive of all
that survive. However practices prohibited in its provisions are likely to
have continued and the extent of its coverage serves only to document
the extent of the prevailing disorder.

The uneasy reconciliation of Euergetes I] and his two wives was soon
ended by his death in the summer of 1146, in the fifty-fourth year of his
reign. The succession was not clear and once again conflict in the ruling
house, between the two Cleopatras, had economic repercussions. The
state of agriculture in the years following Euergetes’ death suggests the
new rulers experienced some difficulty in establishing their control over
the country. At Kerkeosiris in the South Fayum only 24 per cent of the
cleruchic land of the military settlers was sown with wheat in 116/15
compared with 43 per cent in 119/18, and the derelict land rose from 24
per cent to 58 per cent of the area. By 113/12 however a noticeable
improvement had taken place with only 34 per cent of this land
registered as derelict and 34 per cent under wheat, the major crop of the
country.'4 Such detailed records of change, preserved on waste papyrus
used to wrap the sacred crocodiles, may of course simply reflect local
conditions that are otherwise unknown, but often they can be shown to
be the product of the political state of the country where lack of central
control carried direct consequences for agriculture.

The actual succession following the death of Euergetes II is variously
recorded; the different versions well illustrate the problem of sources for
this period which lacks a coherent narrative. Of the classical authors the

13, PTebt 5 = COrdPtol. 53 (118 B.C.) with Bingen 1984 (p 174) 926-32. 4 PTebt1 and tv.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE LATER PTOLEMIES 319

main source for the alternating reigns of the two surviving sons of
Euergetes H, Ptolemy IX Soter II and Ptolemy X Alexander, is
Pausanias’ guide to the monuments of Greece which comments on the
statues of the Ptolemies at the entrance to the Odeum in Athens. For
Pausanias, as for the later writers Justin and Eusebius, the story is one of
jealousy and scandal, of plots and intrigues, of dastardly deeds of murder
and the comings and goings of kings.!5 With a strong overlay of moral
disapproval, classical authors ascribe full responsibility for the downfall
of the Ptolemaic kingdom to these later kings and queens.'© And
following the death of Euergetes II, her uncle-husband, it is Cleopatra
III who dominates the scene, scheming for the succession of the younger
son Alexander. Egyptian sources however, especially the hieroglyphs on
the temple walls at Edfu, have been seen as suggesting a somewhat
different course of events. Contrary to the picture of the classical sources,
Soter II and Alexander were perhaps only half-brothers, the sons
respectively of the two wives of Euergetes II, Cleopatra II and her
daughter Cleopatra III, and as competitors for the throne each was
championed by his mother who, during her lifetime, ruled together with
him.!? All interpretations agree in stressing queenly power in these years;
this reached an extreme in 105 /4 when Cleopatra III replaced the regular
male priest of the dynastic cult in Alexandria (Sammelbuch 10763). Froma
Pathyrite demotic contract (PRy/dem. 111 20) it is clear that at least for a
brief period following the death of Euergetes II on 28 June 116 the two
Cleopatras reigned together with Ptolemy IX Soter II; the queen who
then shared the throne with Soter II was probably Cleopatra III. The
king’s younger brother Alexander was meanwhile based in Cyprus. By
the end of October 107 Ptolemy X Alexander had supplanted his elder
brother on the throne, whilst Soter II in turn sought refuge in Cyprus.!8
The joint reign of Cleopatra II] and her son continued until her death in
101; she was now replaced on the throne by Alexander’s wife Cleopatra
Berenice, the daughter of Soter II. According to Pausanias, in a tale of
murder and revenge, Alexander was personally responsible for his
mother’s death. Since her husband’s death her position had not been
altogether secure, and already in 103 it was perhaps a sense of insecurity
that led her to send away to Cos her ‘grandsons’ (in fact two sons of Soter
II and one of Alexander) accompanied by the royal treasure. The

15 Paus. 1.9.1-3; Just. Epit. xxx1x.3.1-2; 4.1-6; 5.1-3; Porph. FGrH 260 F 32 = Euseb. Chron.
1.163~4 (Schoene).

16 E.g. Ath. xtt.s50 b, Ptolemy X Alexander rivalled his father in obesity; his agility in after-
dinner dancing was remarkable, whilst to relieve himself he needed two to support him.

17 Cauville and Devauchelle 1984 (p 178) 47-50, disagreeing with Otto and Bengtson 1938 (D
216) 112-93, Volkmann 1959 (0 242) 1738-48 and Musti 1960 (p 214); in arguing that Cleopatra II
continued as queen until 107 B.c. they fail to take account of contemporary Greek inscriptions,

especially OGIS 739, and the cumulative evidence of demotic protocols, especially those from
Thebes. '8 For the date see Boswinkel and Pestman 1982 (p 177) 67-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

316 8c. EGYPT, 146-31 B.C.

alienation overseas of royal wealth was to become standard practice in
the first century B.c.; on this first occasion the immediate beneficiary was
Mithridates VI of Pontus who in 88 took both the island and the
princes.!9

With Soter II ruling in Cyprus as an independent king, the wealth and
unity of the country were divided. Soon the division became tripartite
when Soter II, retaining Cyprus alone, was replaced as king in Cyrene by
Ptolemy Apion. Justin (xxxrx.5.2) tells that Apion, a bastard son of
Euergetes II, received this inheritance from his father in 116 B.c. If so,
inscriptions show his father’s will was long ignored with Soter II ousted
from Cyrene only after his loss of the Egyptian throne. Whether Rome
had exercised influence on the will of Euergetes II cannot be known. The
extent however of unofficial Roman penetration may be seen in two
Latin graffiti from Philae in Upper Egypt that are contemporary with the
king’s death and dated by the consuls of that year. And when a member
of the Senate visited in 112 official arrangements preceded his tour of the
sights.?° In any event, a further blow to Ptolemaic power was sustained
when, as a recognized alternative to prolonging dynastic discord, on his
death in 96 Ptolemy Apion left Cyrene to Rome. Rome’s lack of
immediate intervention is of less interest here than the act of legacy itself.
Ptolemy X Alexander followed suit, leaving what remained of the
Ptolemaic kingdom, both Cyprus and Egypt, to Rome.2! Again Rome
was to be slow in claiming her legacy but there is no clearer indication of
her pre-eminence in Mediterranean politics than her recurrent nomi-
nation as territorial legatee.

Alexander survived on the Egyptian throne until 88 when the
Alexandrians ejected him. Soter II now returned to take Alexandria,
defeating Alexander in the countryside. The younger brother then fled
to Myra in Lycia and from there towards Cyprus; the Edfu temple simply
records a voyage to Punt, the archetypal ‘foreign parts’. Caught at sea he
was defeated and killed.2? The elder brother, Soter II, in control of
Alexandria still faced the problem of renewed revolt in the Thebaid. It
took three years finally to crush the home of Amon and ‘he did such
damage that there was nothing left to remind the Thebans of their
former prosperity’ .23

This bare and somewhat confused outline of events may be supple-
mented by documents and inscriptions from Egypt. There had been

19 App. Mith. 4.23.

20 SEG xxviti.1485; cf PTebt 33 =WCahrest 3 (112 3.c.). Full discussion in van ’t Dack 1980 (D
184) and 1983 (D 186).

21 Badian 1967 (D 169) argues convincingly for this identification rather than with Alexander II.

22 Euseb. Chron 1.164 (Schoene) is the main source (cf Porph. FGrH 260 F 32.8-9). Using the
numismatic evidence Merkholm 1975 (B 207) 14—15 modifies the discussion of Samuel 1965 (D 230);
see Zauzich 1977 (D 249) 193 for Year 26= 29 of the king outside Egypt. 23 Paus. 1.9.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE LATER PTOLEMIES 317

unrest in the Thebaid for some years. In 90 B.c. rebels had attacked the
Latopolite and Pathyrite nowof, and in the stasis of 88 Platon, as
epistrategos of the Thebaid, had at least one native commander (Nech-
thyris) under him. A mosaic of local rivalries emerges with Pathyris
supporting Platon, its priests loyal to Soter II against the neighbouring
temples of Thebes; here it was Hathor opposing Amon.” Indeed during
both phases of his reign Ptolemy IX Soter II, who through the name
Lathyrus, Chick-pea, was made an object of ridicule to the Greeks,
appears to have been well aware of Egyptian sensitivities and, especially,
cults. Early in his reign, together with his mother he had made
concessions to the priests of Chnoum at Elephantine?5 and, born in the
same year as an Apis bull, he showed consistent concern for this
particular cult. In contrast, under his brother Alexander sacred bulls
tended to suffer. At Hermonthis in Upper Egypt the Buchis bull born in
April 101 B.c., with Alexander on the throne, was not installed until
April 82, after the restoration of Soter II; it survived only five years
more. And in Memphis the Apis bull which had died in his brother’s
reign (sometime after June 96) was only given a proper burial in the
eleventh year of its successor. This was in 87/6 when the Apis burial
probably accompanied the second coronation of Soter II, now whm-h*,
‘repeating the diadem’ in his celebration at Memphis of a thirty-year Sed-
festival, a renewal of power in the old Egyptian style.26 In his long-
drawn-out struggle with Thebes Memphis had served as base for Soter II
and the cults of Lower Egypt had supported this sovereign when faced
with the defection of the south.

Internal dissension was only one of Egypt’s problems; there was
Rome too. At Edfu the great pylon had been started in 116 B.c. An
inscription on the temple enclosure wall from around 88 records its
decoration with inscriptions and all of the ritual scenes designed to repel
strangers.2”? Yet it was in vain that the Egyptians sought for divine
protection. In 87/6 whilst fighting was continuing in the Thebaid a
group of Romans came to Alexandria. Sulla’s quaestor L. Licinius
Lucullus was looking for ships to build up a Sullan fleet. His encounter
in Alexandria with the newly restored Ptolemy IX Soter II typifies the
different modes of Rome and eastern kings. Met by the entire Egyptian
fleet Lucullus was offered unprecedented hospitality within the royal
palace. An entertainment allowance four times the norm was made and
rich gifts offered him to the value of eighty talents; the statutory tourist
visit upriver was arranged. Treated as an equal by an oriental king the

24 P Berl dem 13.608 (90 B.C.); Sammelbuch 6300; 6644; WChrest 12 (88 B.c.). On the identification
of those involved see Thomas 1975 (D 237) 117-19. 25 OGIS 168.

26 Crawford 1980 (p 182) 12-14; Traunecker 1979 (D 241) 429-31.

77 Cauville and Devauchelle 1984 (D 178) 43.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

318 8c. EGYPT, 146-31 B.C.

Roman quaestor was doubtless expected to reciprocate at some time in
the future. As others were to learn, this was not the Roman way.
Lucullus rejected both tour and gifts; he left without the ships he
sought.?8

From Lucullus Sulla will have received a firsthand report on the
wealth of Egypt. So on the death of Soter late in 81, although to date
Rome had taken no action on his younger brother’s will, now that the
Alexandrians lacked a king and Ptolemy X Alexander’s widow was on
the throne, Sulla sent out as king and consort the son of Ptolemy X, her
stepson, Ptolemy XI Alexander IT. Captured on Cos by Mithridates VI in
88, Alexander IT had in 84 escaped from Pontus to Sulla and through him
to Rome. Exiled from Egypt for the past twenty-three years, the new
king did not care for his stepmother-wife whom he speedily had
murdered. After only three weeks on the throne he in turn perished, at
the hands of the Alexandrians who resented both the interference of
Rome and the excesses of Sulla’s nominee. These royal internecine
conflicts, the people of Alexandria, and the power of Rome interacted to
hasten the collapse of Ptolemaic Egypt.

For the moment Rome exercised restraint. The two sons of Soter II,
sent like their cousin to safety on Cos in 103 and captured by Mithridates,
now returned from Syria to their home. As Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos
the elder took the throne in Egypt, the younger brother made do with
Cyprus for his rule. The (interrupted) thirty years of the reign of Ptolemy
XII, more commonly called Auletes, the Fluteplayer, were fatal for the
independence of the country. Popillius Laenas’ ultimatum at Eleusis in
168 B.c. (Vol. viir?, pp. 344-5) and the testament of Ptolemy X
Alexander were earlier stages in a process which was to culminate in the
annexation of Egypt by Augustus. Under Auletes Egypt became
subordinate to political issues and personalities in Rome as the king
struggled to retain his control. His position at home was not unchal-
lenged and in 75 two sons of Cleopatra Selene (by one of the Seleucid
dynasty) came to Rome in quest of the Egyptian throne. They stayed just
over a year before returning empty-handed, and the young Antiochus
who returned via Sicily had bad experiences at the hands of its governor
Verres. Meanwhile in Egypt Auletes hung on, cultivating good relations
with the Egyptian hierarchy and sponsoring widespread temple-build-
ing. The great Horos temple at Edfu was finished in his reign and he built
on to temples at Karnak, Deir el Medina and Medinet Habu in Thebes,
Dendera, Kom Ombo, Philae, Dabod, Athribis, Medamud, Hermonthis
and on Bigga Island. As always such gifts to the gods demanded some
recognition in return and under Auletes there appears a significant
development in the divinity of the king himself. Auletes was the first of

28 Plut. Luc. 2.5-3.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE LATER PTOLEMIES 319

the Prolemies to call himself god, ¢heos, without the use of his name, and
in Memphis the high priest Psenptais was appointed his personal priest.?9

To be pharaoh however was no longer sufficient and finally in 59 in
return for 6,000 talents made over to Caesar and Pompey, the king was
officially declared ‘friend and ally’ of the Roman people. Even before
this, the independence of his kingdom was under threat. In 65 when M.
Licinius Crassus as censor proposed making Egypt tributary to Rome he
was vigorously opposed by his colleague Q. Lutatius Catulus. In 64/3
Pompey was in the East and extended Roman rule right up to the eastern
border of Egypt. He did not, however, enter Egypt although the
country was at variance with its king and the king himself invited him,
sending him gifts, riches and clothing for his entire army. It was unclear,
Appian records, whether he feared the strength of the kingdom which
still enjoyed prosperity or the jealousy of his opponents, whether it was
oracles which stopped him or some other reason. Strabo recorded a
crown worth 4,o00 gold pieces sent to Pompey in Damascus and the
wealth of Egypt was becoming even better known at Rome.* When in
63 Cicero spoke out against the Rullan agrarian proposals (ch. 9 below,
Pp. 349-51) he stressed the prosperity of the country, the bounty of its
fields.3!

Soon after his recognition in Rome Auletes was driven from his
kingdom by a populace enraged by his passivity. For Cyprus was being
annexed by Rome and lost to Egypt. Probably with a view to paying for
his new free corn distribution of 58, P. Clodius had proposed realizing
the king’s assets in Cyprus. M. Porcius Cato was sent out to put the
proposal into effect and by 56 Cyprus was added to the province of
Cilicia. As in 75/4 when Cyrene was at last settled by Rome and P.
Lentulus Marcellinus successfully reorganized the royal lands which
provided an income for Rome, so now Cyprus was to benefit the people
of Rome, to the detriment of Egypt.*2 Ptolemy, the brother of Auletes,
committed suicide rather than submit. Auletes himself, showing no
opposition to the final dismemberment of his kingdom, was forced to
flee to Rome where Pompey provided him with credit and temporary
accommodation. In Egypt Auletes was replaced on the throne by his
daughter Berenice IV, at first with her sister Cleopatra Tryphaena and
later her new husband Archelaus, a son of Mithridates. Rome took
notice. A counter-embassy from Alexandria appeared a threat to
Auletes’ safety in Rome and he again departed eastwards, to Ephesus

29 Porter and Moss 1927- (D 221) for temple-building; OGIS 186.8-10 (14 May 62 B.c.) ‘kyrios
basileus Theos Neos Dionysos Philopator kai Philadelphos’; cf. the stele BM 886.4 ‘first prophet of
the lord of two lands’ (ed. Reymond 1981 (p 227) 147).

32 Badian 1965 (c 162). For the Roman side of these events see ch. 10 below, p. 379.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

320 8c. EGYPT, 146-31 B.C.

where he found greater security living under the protection of Artemis
within her temple. Egypt and the fate of the Egyptian king was now a
Roman issue with Pompey and his opponents vying for an Egyptian
command. In 57 the consul P. Lentulus Spinther was charged with the
restoration of the Egyptian king, but the Sibylline books prevented the
deployment of an army. Events however overtook political decisions
and in the spring of 55 Aulus Gabinius, the proconsul in Syria, illegally
left his province and escorted Auletes back to Alexandria. Cicero records
Gabinius’ fear of the fleet of Archelaus and the growing number of
pirates in the Mediterranean.33 The promises of 10,000 talents from the
king cannot have been entirely unconnected. Mark Antony went to
Alexandria as Gabinius’ cavalry commander and in Gabinius’ entourage
was Antipater, the Idumaean councillor of Hyrcanus II, high priest of
Jerusalem and father of Herod the Great. The Jews of Egypt might bea
significant element in support of a particular sovereign and later, in 47,
both Antipater and Hyrcanus were to be influential in gaining support
for Caesar in the overthrow of Auletes’ heirs. Many of the invading
troops, the Gabiniani, who came to range themselves in support of the
Ptolemaic dynasty, stayed on in Egypt — the first Roman troops of
occupation.

Auletes celebrated his return with his daughter’s death and other
murders. His ability to fulfil his financial promises seems to have been
somewhat limited. In Rome Gabinius was tried, fined the sum which had
been promised him and went bankrupt. In Egypt Rabirius Postumus
was appointed by the king to the chief financial post of the country, that
of dioiketes, but in spite of abandoning his toga and adopting Greek dress
he failed to recover the money owed to Pompey and other Romans; he
was driven ignominiously from the country. The Alexandrians who
earlier had shown ‘all zeal in looking after those visiting from Italy, keen,
in their fear, to give no cause for complaint or war’ now had little time
for Roman interference. Two sons of Bibulus, now governor of Syria,
who in 50 were sent to recall the Gabiniani from the attractions of
Alexandria in order to fight the Parthians were summarily put to death in
the city.>4 Slaughter in the streets and in the gymnasium had become
regular features of life in the capital city.

Auletes was not long to enjoy his position as king. He died in 51
leaving his kingdom to his elder son, Ptolemy XIII now aged ten, and to
his daughter, Cleopatra VII aged seventeen; the news of his death
reached Rome by the end of June.35 The Roman people was named as
witness to his will and a copy sent to Rome for deposit in the aerarium
somehow ended up in Pompey’s hands. Whatever the facts, the will of

33 Cic. Rab. Post. 8.20. 4 Caes. BCiv. 111.110; Val. Max. Iv.1.15. 38 Cic. Fam. viit4.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE LATER PTOLEMIES 321

Auletes made open recognition of the overriding power of Rome to
control the future of Egypt. Any succession to the Egyptian throne now
took place under Roman protection.

Cleopatra VII however was primarily an Egyptian queen, the first of
her family to speak the language of the country she ruled.* Ignoring her
brother she sought support within her kingdom. Barely a month after
her accession she travelled upriver to Hermonthis to be present in person
at the installation of the Buchis bull on 22 March 51; she was later to
build a small birth-temple to the god at Hermonthis.3” Likewise, when in
the third year of her reign the Apis died, she herself met part of the cult
expenses, endowing a table of offerings and providing daily rations for
those involved in the rites of burial. Earlier Prolemies had provided cash;
the detail of Cleopatra’s endowment is new and suggests some level of
personal involvement in the bull cults of Egypt which had come to
represent the essence of native religion. As the goddess Cleopatra the
younger, philopator, ‘father-loving’, and philopatris, ‘patriotic’ (BGU
2376.1 (36/5 B.c.)), she was indeed queen of Egypt.

In Rome however civil war intervened and the uncertainty of the
outcome can only have increased the dynastic tensions in Alexandria
where, as regents, the eunuch Potheinus and general Achillas supported
the cause of Ptolemy XIII against his elder sister. After Pharsalus
Pompey fled in hope to Egypt where he was beheaded at Pelusium. The
deed was not welcomed by Caesar when he reached Alexandria three
days later. The Alexandrian War ensued, fought over the winter of 48/7.
The rest of the story is well known (see below pp. 433-4). Re-established
as queen by Caesar at first with Ptolemy XIII as her husband, and later in
March 47 with her even younger brother Ptolemy XIV, Cleopatra VII
used her scheming intelligence to the full. Cyprus was restored by Caesar
to the crown of Egypt; it had served again as a haven for endangered
Ptolemies when, together with his sister Arsinoe, the younger son of
Auletes was sent there briefly before being summoned to the throne and
marriage with his elder sister. Caesar dallied shortly, but then he left.
Caesarion was born in 47, and in 46 Cleopatra and her son followed
Caesar to Rome. She left in 44, soon after the Ides of March. In 41
Antony first formed a liaison with the queen, which he was to resume
five years later. It lasted until after Actium and the capture of Alexandria
by Octavian on 3 August 30 (Vol. x2, ch. 1). Soon after, the queen died, a
self-inflicted royal death at the bite of an asp, and Octavian was left to
manage the inheritance of the Ptolemies.

% Plut. Ant. 27.3-4.

37 Mond and Myers 1934 (D 213) 11 12; Tarn 1936 (D 235) 187-9; Bloedow 1963 (D 175) 91-2; cf.
Skeat 1954 (D 233) 40-1 for a more sceptical interpretation.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

322 8c. EGYPT, 146-31 B.C.

II. EGYPT: SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

What of the Egypt that Octavian was to inherit for Rome? The dynastic
struggles of the last century of Ptolemaic control with constant changes
of ruler, significant overseas expenditure by Auletes and, latterly, the
absence of Cleopatra in Rome, had had their effect on the economy of
Egypt. Normally Egypt was a rich country. In cash terms, even under
the poor government of Auletes, Strabo (quoting Cicero) records that
the annual income of the country was 12,500 talents. Auletes however
had been extravagant in the alienation of this wealth: gifts, gold and
provisions for Pompey in 63 B.c., 6,000 talents to Caesar and Pompey in
59 and 10,000 to Gabinius in 55; and the Alexandrian envoys opposing
the king had equally brought their gold to Rome. The gold sarcophagus
of Alexander the Great was even melted down to finance the king’s
expenditure and as dioiketes Rabirius had tried unsuccessfully to collect
the debts owed to individual Romans.°8 On arrival in Alexandria in 48
Caesar was still owed almost 3,000 talents of which just over sixteen
talents were paid towards his army costs; the rest was remitted.3? Even
Ptolemaic wealth was running low. The tetradrachm silver coinage
which had maintained a high degree of fineness throughout the Ptole-
maic period began to deteriorate under Auletes, dropping sharply in
silver content in the years after his restoration. This decline in the
quality of the silver coinage is a more reliable reflection of the difficulties
of Ptolemy XII and Cleopatra VII than the vagaries of the copper
drachmae used as units of account within the written documents.*!
Agriculture however — the palcherrimi agri, the agrorum bonitas so
envied in Rome— formed the constant basis of Egyptian wealth and well-
being. And agriculture, besides needing regular supervision with a close
control of the irrigation system, might suffer also from low Niles. The
effects of both man-made and natural disaster on the cereal production of
the country shows clearly in a group of Heracleopolite papyri now in
Berlin.42 The secession of Thebes and the south soon after the resto-
ration of Soter II (pp. 316-17 above) figures also in Middle Egypt as a
time of interruption of communications (ameixia) which in 84/3, in the
Heracleopolite somos, resulted in flight from the land and the loss of taxes
to the state.43 In the troubled middle years of the century unsettled con-
ditions regularly interfered with corn-production and transport. Ship-
contractors, zaukleroi, might now be grouped in corporations and armed
38 Serab. xvir.1.13; App. Mth. 17.114; Cie. Rab. Post. 3.6 with Suet. Caes. 54.3; Cic. Pis. 21.48-50;
Plut. Ant. 3.2; Strab. xvir.1.8 for the sarcophagus, assuming Pareisactus, the son of Kokke, is
Auletes; Dio xxx1x.13.2. 39 Plut. Caes. 48.4. #0 Walker 1976 (B 256) 150-2.
‘| Gara 1984 (D 193); on this hypothesis what is normally termed copper inflation (Reekmans

1951 (D 226)) is not a true inflation but reflects rather a change in accounting procedures.
4 BGU vi and xiv. 43 BGU 2370.37—-42.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT: SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 323

guards accompanied the corn-ships down the Nile.“ The early years of
Cleopatra’s reign were particularly hard in the countryside as natural
disaster combined with political problems. Instructions preserved for
the collection of grain from the Heracleopolite zomos from 51/50 have an
even more urgent tone than usual; in the same year, in Hiera Nesos, the
local priests complain that the royal cult has suffered from the depletion
of the local population.*> A failure of the harvest is similarly suggested
by a royal order issued on 27 October 50 which forbade, on pain of death,
the transport of grain and pulses to any destination other than Alexan-
dria; a loan contract of the same year foresees the possibility of corn
reaching a vastly inflated price.*6 A shortage of water, abrochia, in Year 3
of Cleopatra VII (50/49 B.c.) led to the desertion of the village of Tinteris
by all settlers in the area; the local farmers were unable to pay their taxes.
And finally Pliny’s notice of the lowest flood ever in the year of Pharsalus
(48 B.c.) suggests not so much the anger of the gods as the culmination of
a flood failure lasting over at least three years, and maybe more.*”
Peasants of course always complain and official papyrus archives in their
nature preserve these complaints, but the accumulation of evidence does
appear to add up to a picture of widespread disaster in these years.
Another first-century papyrus preserves the tantalizing words ‘greed’
and ‘Romans’ in a sentence now incomplete.*® Overseas debts would
appear to have combined with natural catastrophe to oppress both the
population of Egypt and the Ptolemaic state. The new trade with India
was hardly sufficient to replace the income lost.*9 All of Cleopatra’s
powers were needed to counteract collapse; the kingdom she ruled was
very down at heel.

To function, the Ptolemaic state depended on its administrative
bureaucracy and on the army. Neither was particularly successful in
these years. The last Ptolemaic decree to survive is an attempt to protect
farmers in the Delta who originated in Alexandria from the illegal
exactions and harassment of crown officials.°° There is no reason to
suppose that this decree was any more successful than its predecessors;
undue pressure from officials would seem one unavoidable consequence
of the unsalaried bureaucracy on which the Ptolemies relied. Central
control was weak and government officials looked first to their own
interests. Loyalty to the Prolemies, reinforced through the dynastic cult,
was not sufficient to counteract the pressures of personal interests.

The independence of Egypt depended on its military strength which
by the late second century B.c. was both depleted and as much Egyptian
as immigrant. Loyalty of the troops towards the state was variously

“4 BGU 1741-3 + 2368; 1742 (63 B.C.). Thompson (Crawford) 1983 (D 238) 66-9.

45 BGU 1760; 1835. COrdP tol 73; PSI 1098.28-9. 47 BGU 1842; Pliny HN v.58.
48 BGU 2430.26. 49 Strab. xvit.t.13. 50 COrdPtol 75-6 (12 April 41 B.c.).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

324 8c. EGYPT, 146-31 B.C.

fostered though ultimately the ability to provide pay was the decisive
factor. Since the early years of the dynasty soldiers had been settled on
the land as cleruchs, and rights over this land, as over housing billets,
were gradually extended over the years. In 60 B.c. a royal decree records
the free testamentary disposition of such holdings and it is clear that by
now even women might inherit cleruchic land.5! (What in such cases
happened to the military obligation is not clear.) Mercenaries too, from
all over the Mediterranean, played an important part in the military
protection of the country. In 58 Auletes was forced to flee his home
because he had no mercenary troops; the city garrison in Alexandria
and household troops had presumably joined the other side. Since the
reign of Philometor mercenary garrisons and their associated civilian
communities had been regularly organized in politeumata, normally
ethnic groupings with their own elected officers, the Idumaeans for
example, the Boeotians or the Cretans; the activities of these groups were
social and religious.5> In a country where social groupings were
traditional (the guilds for instance of the mummifiers and undertakers of
pre-Ptolemaic Egypt), when times were unsettled the collective instinct
grew more strong. Alongside the associations of goose-herds, donkey-
drivers or ship-contractors, in their corporate dealings the mercenary
politeumata too might protect the interests of their members in relation to
the state.54 And here too, as within the bureaucracy, the dynastic cult had
a cohesive function; temples might be dedicated by representatives of
these politeumata on behalf of the royal family, or influential officials
praised for good will towards the ruling house.

A further role of the army should be mentioned. Both through
garrisons and cleruchic settlement the Ptolemaic army was one of the
more important forces for the integration of immigrants within Egyp-
tian society. The family archive from 150 to 88 B.c. of Peteharsemtheus
son of Panebkhounis or that of Dryton stationed in the garrison at
Gebelen (Pathyris) show how easily such soldiers intermarried with
Egyptian women, their children were bilingual often with both Greek
and Egyptian names. Both languages might be used in legal documents
and families who once came from Crete or Cyrene were thus assimilated
into the society of Egypt.%

More generally however changes were taking place in the relations
between Greeks and Egyptians in the administration, for instance,
where those of Greek extraction would seem at first to have predomi-
nated within its upper echelons. From the late second century B.c.

5% COrdPtol 71.12-15; BGU xiv Appendix 3. 52 Dio xxxIx.12.2-3.

53 Thompson (Crawford) 1984 (D 239).

54 IFay 109 (37 B.c.); WChrest 440 (Arst cent. B.c.); BGU 1741-3 + 2368 (63 B.c.).

55 Pestman 1965 (D 218) 47-105; Winnicki 1972 (D 245); Pestman 1978 (D 220) 30-7. For
intermarriage and assimilation of Cyrenaeans in the Fayum earlier see I Fay 2 (224~221 B.C.).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT: SOCIETY AND ECONOMY 325

however two governor-generals of the Thebaid and a series of nomos
governors in the south are found with Egyptian names.5© Whereas the
apparent family succession to high administrative office found here may
primarily reflect the breakaway tendency of the south, it also shows some
change of emphasis and the opening up to Egyptians of the top levels of
the administration. Similarly the increasingly frequent bi- or trilingual
publication of royal decrees suggests some recognition by the ruling
power of the importance of the Egyptian element in society. From
Saqqara near Memphis a demotic archive with a few Greek documents
shows that by the first century B.c. even those from the most traditional
of Egyptian occupations, the mummifiers, had begun to adapt their ways
to those of the ruling race. When in 99 Petesis, undertaker-in-chief of the
Apis and Mnevis bulls, found himself and his property under attack he
appealed to the king for protection. In answer to his request he was
granted a wooden plaque with an official (but in the event ineffective)
warning to trespassers, written in both Greek and Egyptian. When ten
years later his son Chonouphis made a loan, the contract was in Greek;
and when his granddaughter Thaues was also named Asklepias this was
the first Greek name in a family recorded over ten generations.5”

The process of reciprocal acculturation can be seen only sporadically.
Whilst proceeding at different rates in different contexts it affected all
levels of society. On the walls of the great temple at Edfu, Horos drags
Seth around tied by his feet in a positively Homeric scene, and from the
nearby cemetery of Hassaia come elaborate epitaphs in both Greek and
hieroglyphs celebrating members of a family of senior military officers,
who are also priests within the local cults, recorded with both Greek and
Egyptian names; the same individuals are recorded in both Greek and
Egyptian forms.*8 Both the culture of classical Greece expressed in
epigrammatic form and the native culture of Egypt with all its religious
Overtones are there, in active intercommunication.

It was probably the gods and temples of Egypt which together
remained the single most powerful force in the life of the Ptolemaic
kingdom for Greek and Egyptians alike. Yet even this was a force
diminished in strength. Greek cult continued for the Greeks, especially
in Alexandria, yet increasingly behind Greek names Egyptian gods lurk
in disguise. (Herakles Kallinikos for instance whose temple at Theadel-
phia was linked with that of Isis Eseremphthis may well have been
Harsaphes or possibly Onouris.)°° And for the Greeks too the religion of
their adopted country proved strong and might be turned against

5 De Meulenaere 1959 (p 211) and Shore 1979 (p 232); Thissen 1977 (p 236), Hermonthite.

57 UPZ 106-9 (99-98 B.C.); 125 (89 B.C.); 118 (83 B.C.).
58 Derchain 1974 (D 187) 15-19; Yoyotte 1969 (D 248); Clarysse 1985 (D 179) 62-4.
59 Sammelbuch 6236 = [Fay 114 (70 B.c.). Bonnet 1952 (D 176) 286-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

326 8¢. EGYPT, 146-31 B.C.

foreign powers. Whilst Amon and the south were often in opposition to
the powers of Lower Egypt, the high priesthood of Memphis remained
consistently loyal to the Ptolemies and enjoyed strong personal relations
with the ruling house. Ptolemies built Egyptian temples to the native
gods and in return the gods of Egypt and their priesthood would
support their rule. Concessions to the temples and their priests conti-
nued to form a regular element of Ptolemaic royal decrees. So in 100 B.c.
when Ptolemy X Alexander I ruled with Cleopatra Berenice a royal
decree was promulgated protecting sacred fish.© From the first century
B.C. survives a series of decrees recording royal grants of asylum granted
to village temples of Thracian, Greek and Egyptian gods, grants which
recall those earlier made to the great Egyptian temples of Memphis or
Bousiris, now in the troubled later years of Ptolemaic rule extended more
widely.6! Sometimes set up bilingually, these decrees may be seen to
indicate an extension of violence in the countryside and the relative
weakness of the local shrines. There are however two further respects in
which they throw interesting light on the period. Firstly in these decrees,
bound close to the local village cults, appears the dynastic cult of the
Ptolemies, with cult images, sacrifices, libations, burnt offerings and
sacred lights. Grants made to an Egyptian god like Isis Sachypsis or Isis
Eseremphthis at Theadelphia might also benefit the royal gods.
Secondly they illustrate the role of the army and the Greek military
settlers in Egypt. These grants of asylum are regularly negotiated
through senior army officers who now it seems were established as
influential members of the local community. In these grants may be seen
reflected the interlocking interests of priests, army and crown in the
continuation and success of the Ptolemaic regime. Finally, however,
through the troubled years of the first century B.c. not even the strength
and power of the gods of Egypt could resist the force of Rome.®

6 PYale 56.

6) Sammelbuch 620 = COrdPtol 64 (96 B.c.); [Fay 152 (95 B.C.); 112-13 (93 B.C.); 114 (70 B.C.); 135
(69 B.c.); 136 (69-68 B.c.); COrdP tof 70? (63 B.c.); [Fay 116-18 (57 B.c.); COrdProl 67 (46 B.c.); BGU
1212 (46 B.C.) with van ’t Dack 1970 (p 183); Donadoni 1983 (p 188); OGIS 129 (47-30 B.c.)
reaffirming an asylum grant for a synagogue made earlier by Euergetes HI. My interpretation is at
variance with that of Dunand 1979 (p 189). 62 This chapter was last revised in 1986.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 9

THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES, 69-60 B.c.

T. P. WISEMAN

I. LUSTRUM

In 69 B.c. the Roman citizen body was ritually purified. The citizens
assembled at dawn in the Campus Martius, each in the property-class and
century to which he had been assigned. A bull, a ram and a boar were led
solemnly three times round the assembled host and brought for sacrifice
to the altar of Mars, where the censors stood in their purple togas,
wreathed and anointed to pray for the gods’ favour on a people
cleansed.!

Sixteen years had passed since the last /ustrum, more than three times
the regular interval, and much had happened in the mean time to make
the restoration of divine approval particularly urgent. There had been
civil war, slave rebellion and natural disasters. Worst of all — for rule and
empire were justified only by the moral superiority of the rulers — there
was corruption in the political elite which cried out for a stern censorial
purge.?

That duly took place. The censors had made full use of their arbitrary
powers and amid popular applause expelled sixty-four senators, includ-
ing the patrician consul of 71 B.c., P. Lentulus Sura.3 It was a good
moment for the eloquent and ambitious M. Cicero to publish his
devastating exposure of another guilty man, C. Verres (ch. 7 above, pp.
214-15, 225-7).

It was also the essential moment for the dedication of the rebuilt
temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, even though not completely finished (ch.
6, pp. 189, 203). Sulla had meant to dedicate it himself; instead of that
name of ill omen, for the next 138 years the great architrave would
immortalize Q. Lutatius Catulus, cos. 78.4 And in the new temple the

' For the /ustrum ritual, see for example Varro, Ling. v1.86—7 (quoting the sabulae censoriae), Livy
1.44.1~2, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.22.1-2, Polyb. v1.5 3.7 (togas), Ath. x1v.66oc.

2 Cic. Div. Caec. 8 (‘censorium nomen... . poscitur’). Ethical justification of empire: Posidonius
ap. Sen. Ep. 90.4, Cic. Rep. 111.36; cf. Livy xxit.13.11, Tac. Aan. xui1.56.1 (‘melioribus parere’).

3 Livy Per. xcvurt (‘censores asperam censuram egerunt’), Cie. Clay. 117~34 (130f for the
applause), Plut. Cie. 17, Dio xxxvit.30.4.

* Cic. Verr. 4.69, Val. Max. vi.9.5, Tac. Hist, 1.72.3; Pliny HN virt.138, Plut. Poplicola 15.2
(Sulla). Date: Phlegon FGrH 257F 12.11, Cassiod. Chron. ad ann. 69, cf. Livy Per. xcvttt.

327

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

328 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

libri fatales were back in their stone chest, ready to give Rome oracular
advice in any crisis. Sibylline prophecies had been sought out from every
source by the XVviri sacris faciundis.$

The first name on the cleaned-up list of senators was that of Mam.
Aemilius Lepidus, cos. 77; the princeps senatus had to be a patrician. But
the true leader of the Senate was Catulus. His ancestral glory shone more
brightly since the suppression of Marius’ memory — his father’s Cimbric
trophies, now unrivalled, matched his ancestor’s from the victory at the
Aegates islands in the First Punic War — and his personal qualities of
steadfast and ruthless determination gave him an authority none of his
contemporaries could match.® The inscription on the Capitoline temple
must have seemed a good omen for the restoration of the moral health of
Rome.

Sertorius and Spartacus were dead; Mithridates had been defeated and
driven from his kingdom; Lucullus’ legions were invading Armenia; the
pirates would be dealt with in the forthcoming Cretan campaign. At
home, the long disputes over the jury-courts and the tribunes’ powers
had been settled at last; and the new citizens from allied Italy were
presumably now enrolled in c/assisand centuria, full and equal members of
the Roman civitas. And yet, in the very /ustrum itself, a thoughtful
observer might detect the elements of future crisis.

First, the sheer size of the citizen body. At the last /astram, in 85,
463,000 civium capita were registered; at this one, 910,000. How was that
going to affect elections? Increased competition was already built into
the senatorial system, with twenty quaestors a year now starting the race
and only two consulships as prizes for the winners, and now there would
be many of the demoted senators adding to the queue as they sought to
rebuild their careers.? The prizes were harder to get, and the means of
getting them, from a vastly larger and untried electorate, were now
much harder to control.

Second, the new citizens themselves. The incorporation of the Italian
communities brought about, among other things, an increase in the
number of wealthy citizens with financial interests overseas. One would
like to know, when the censors were receiving the sworn statements of
each citizen’s property, how many now owned land in the provinces.8

5 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v 62.5f, Fenestella fr. 187, Lactant. Div. Inst. 1.6.9. At least one of the
censors may have been involved: CIL x1v.3573 (on the temple of Albunea, the Tiburtine Sibyl),
with Coarelli 1987 (B 279) 103-10, 223-9.

6 Princeps senatus: Val. Max. v1.7.6 (Mam. Lepidus); Cic. Pés. 6, Vell. Pat. 11.43.4 (Catulus).
Catulus’ primacy: Cic. Pis. 6, Off. 1.76, Dio xxxv1. 30.4, Plut. Mor. 206A, 5 34D. His qualities: Cic. Sest.
ro1, Aft. 1.20.3, Sall. H. 111.48.9m. Moral authority: Cic.1 Verr. 44, Pail. u.12.

7 Dio xxxv1.38.2 on their ‘factions and cliques’.

§ Known examples in Greek lands listed by Wilson 1966 (a 128) 159f. There had long been
settlement in Africa and the West (bid. 40, sof).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE TRIBUNES 329

Now that the subsidized grain system was re-established, a reliable
market no doubt made provincial agriculture, in some areas, a good
investment. Senators were probably not allowed to own land abroad,
but as with other negotia - commercial or financial — they could keep the
letter of the law by taking their profits vicariously through freedmen.?
Like commerce and money-lending, agriculture too could profitably be
carried on outside the areas where Rome ruled directly.1°

Traditionally, the censor’s prayer at the /ustrum was for the gods to
expand Rome’s dominion.!! There were many in the assembly who
would echo that prayer, and in the last few years their wishes had been
acted on; Isauria and Lycaonia added by P. Servilius, Cyrene and
Bithynia organized under Roman rule, Pontus ready for annexation (or
so it seemed), Egypt and Cyprus under serious consideration.!2

So now there would be at least three more places where a Roman
senator could be king for a year, dispensing judgement from the seat of a
Ptolemy or a Nicomedes and receiving appropriate adulation in return.
The Roman political elite had always been motivated by the competitive
pursuit of glory, traditionally realized in the triumph; increasingly
nowadays, glory (of a kind) might depend merely on the lot that
allocated consular and praetorian provinces. The prizes for success in the
elections — the newly competitive, newly unpredictable elections — were
greater than they had ever been. It was nota recipe for political stability.

Three generations before, Polybius had predicted that the admirable
‘mixed constitution’ of the Roman Republic would eventually come to
an end in competitive demagogy when rivalry for office became too
fierce. That would bring about mob-rule, which by his theory of the
cycle of constitutions led inevitably to monarchy." By the time the next
lustrum was performed — by the future emperor Augustus forty-one years
later — the Romans could reflect that he had not been far wrong.

II. THE TRIBUNES

Two of the ingredients in the constitutional mixture Polybius admired
had been removed by Sulla — the tribunes’ rights to prosecute political
criminals before the people, and to carry out the people’s will by

9 E.g. Cic. Att. vi.1.19, 5.2 (Cicero, Philotimus and the Chersonese). For the prohibition, see
Rawson 1976 (G 209) gof: (but contrast Nicolet (ch. 16, p. 618) and Lintott, (ch. 2, p. 20).

10 E.g. Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.42 on Alexandria and Egypt (‘dicitur . . . demigraturos in illa loca nostros
homines propter agrorum bonitatem et omnium rerum copiam’).

1 Val. Max. rv.1.10 (‘ut populi Romani res meliores amplioresque facerent’). The change to ‘ut
perpetuo incolumes servent’, falsely attributed by Valerius to Scipio Aemilianus (cf. Cic. De Or.
11.268), may be late-Augustan.

'2 Pontus: Plut. Luc. 35.5, Dioxxxvi.43.2. Egypt (Cyprus was part of the same bequest): Cic. Leg.
Agr. u1.41f, cf. 1 Verr. 2.76 for the alternative (recognizing Ptolemy Auletes).

'3 Polyb. v1.5 7.5f, cf. 9.5-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

330 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

legislation.'* The element of ‘democracy’ was thus weakened, to the
advantage of the elements of ‘kingship’ and ‘aristocracy’, the consuls and
the Senate. Not that the three categories of Greek political theory meant
much to the Romans: they saw a simple polarity between plebs and
patres,!5 with the latter having the upper hand. What many thought of
the Senate in the seventies B.c. may be seen froma phrase — ‘your cess-pit
of a senate-house’ — that happens to survive from a contemporary satire
on elections.'6

Other fragments of Varro’s Menippean Satires confirm Cicero and
Sallust on the senatorial elite’s abuse of its power — venal judgements by
praetors in Rome and proconsuls in the provinces; profiteering from
Rome’s allies by usury, extortion and looting; the abuse of public funds
for private profit; luxury villas built and furnished out of illegal plunder;
ad hoc dispensations from the laws passed by a handful of conniving
senators; and wholesale bribery of jurors if ever the law was invoked.
‘The habit of corruption gripped the city like a plague.”!”

One man untainted by it was Cn. Pompeius Magnus.'8 In restoring the
power of the tribunes, as in seeing to the election of censors, Pompey had
advertised a return to the ways of the old Republic. For the ideological
argument was developed in historical rather than theoretical terms:
thanks to Licinius Macer’s new history of early Rome, the Sullan
suspension of the tribunes’ rights could be seen as equivalent to the
selfish rule of the patricians in the fifth century, before the First Secession
of the plebs.!9 Now as then, the people’s tribunes were to be the
guarantors of legality and justice.?0

Wherever he went in the years immediately following his consulship,
Pompey was escorted by large and enthusiastic crowds. He did not
appear much in public, however, preferring to keep a dignified and
impressive distance from the actual business of politics. It was not for a
princeps to concern himself with details. He would await his country’s
cal]!

4 Polyb. v1.14.6, 15.10; 16.4-5. The tribunes’ and other magistrates’ right to initiate popular
trials must have been restored in 70, with their other powers. Note Cicero’s threat to prosecute
Verres as aedile in 69 if the quaestio absolved him (1 Verr 36-40; 1 Verr. 1. 14; 5. 151 and 173). See
Lincott 1968 (A 62) 26—7. 5 Sall. H. 1v.q5M.

16 Varro Sat. Men. 4528 (from ‘Serranus wept dpyatpeotav’): ‘hunc vocasset e liquida vita in curiae
vestrae faecem’.

1 Varro Sat. Men. 264, 378, 498-98; Cic. Verr. passim, Leg. Man. 37£, 64-6; Asc. $7-9C, 72-3¢;
Sall. Cat. 12f, H. tv.46m (‘qui quidem mos ut tabes in urbem coniectus’).

48 For example Cic. Leg. Man. 13, 36, 40-2, 66f (on his temperantia, continentia, innocentia), Plut.
Pomp. 1.3, 18.2.

19 Cic. Corn. fr. agp (cf. Verr. 35f, 1 Verr. 5.175 ‘regia ista vestra dominatio’); Sall. H. 1.11 (cf.
I.12M, 111.48M, Caf. 12f for the equivalent in the seventies).

2 Sall. H. 111.48 (oratio Macri), esp. 1,5, 9, 13, 20, 22 on us and iniuria. Cf. Cic. Corn. fr. 35p on the
tribunes’ care for public resources, squandered by ‘they know who’.

21 Plut. Pomp. 23.3f; Sall. H. 111.48.23M (princeps).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE TRIBUNES 331

At the first elections after the /ustram, the sovereign people gave
praetorships to two of the fighting tribunes of the seventies, Lucullus’
enemy L. Quinctius and C. Licinius Macer the historian of the plebs. It
passed a law giving the whole newly elected college of tribunes
responsibility for road and street repairs — an area of public spending
where men like Verres had gained gratia and made corrupt profits”? — and
when the new tribunes entered office on 10 December it approved a
sumptuary law proposed by one of them to curb private luxury. One of
the clauses prevented magistrates and magistrates-elect from accepting
dinner-invitations, and Antius Restio himself, the author of the bill,
never dined out again in his life.23 A new and puritanical regime was
being announced.

It was aimed at men like the great orator Q. Hortensius, who
banqueted on peacocks and watered his plane-trees with wine, and L.
Lucullus, whose palatial villa on the coast at Baiae was now nearing
completion; both were famous for their wickedly expensive fish-
ponds. Hortensius was consul in 69; he had been assigned the
command in Crete, but gladly yielded it to his colleague Q. Metellus.
News of the sack of Delos by a pirate fleet underlined the urgency of the
crisis, and added to Lucullus’ unpopularity. As proconsul of Asia,
Lucullus should have protected Delos; but he was a thousand miles to
the east, picking up the plunder of Mithridates’ retreat. The wealthy
province of Asia was removed from Lucullus’ command by popular vote
and given to one of the praetors.75

The following year the attack continued. Lucullus’ reports to the
Senate made out that Mithridates was totally defeated, and yet the war
went on. His soldiers were near to mutiny, and L. Quinctius was able to
harangue the populace on Lucullus’ protraction of the war to fill his own
coffers. The sovereign assembly removed Cilicia from Lucullus’ com-
mand, and gave it to the consul Q. Marcius Rex.

Cilicia was particularly important at this moment, because along with
Crete (where Q. Metellus was now bogged down besieging Cnossus) it
was the main base for the pirates. Their successes were becoming
intolerable: all coastal Italy was at their mercy; seaborne commerce was
cut off, including the city’s corn supply; and when two of Quinctius’
colleagues were kidnapped, complete with lictors and praetorian insig-
nia, the situation became a national scandal.26

The consulship was competed for in 68 with particular intensity: there
was clearly the chance of a big command if the tribunes had their way.

22 ILLRP 46 a (for the date, see Syme 1979-88 (A 119) 11 560-3), cf. Cie. 1 Verr. 1.154 (avaritia).

2 Macrob. Saf. 11.17.13 (‘bono publico’), Gell. NA 11.24.13; Syme 1979-88 (A 119) 11 563.

2 Varro Rust. 11.6.6, Macrob. Sat. 111.13.3; Badian 1973 (c 164) 131f on Varro Rust. 111.17.9,
Phaedrus 1.5.20. 2 Dio xxxvi.2z.2; Phlegon FGrH 257F12.13 (Delos).

% Cf. Dio xxxv1.27.2—-3 (Gabinius’ speech) on ovovdapyia.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

332 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

Wealth and ambition had reacted swiftly to the challenge of the
expanded electorate. Already organized agencies were in being for the
mass distribution of bribes to the voters, and certain senators were real
experts in the art.2?7 In the new jury-courts, however, potentially
sympathetic senators were now outnumbered by eguites and tribuni aerarti
who could afford to take a strict moral line. So when C. Piso was charged
with bribery at the consular elections, he made sure the case did not come
to court by first buying off the prosecution in a deal worth 3 million
sesterces.28

The non-senatorial jurymen were another unpredictable factor to
result from the /ustrum. The two lists they were drawn from originated
with the censors, who had selected them for the eighteen equestrian
centuries or assessed their property at (probably) over the 400,000
sesterces mark.?° Both classes included for the first time the wealthy local
aristocrats of ex-allied Italy, to some extent ideologically opposed to
their social equals in the senatorial elite, but unwilling to be submerged
into a citizen body that resented them. As jurymen, and as voters in the
centuriate assembly, their status was satisfactorily visible. But at the
games, those annual corporate manifestations of the Quirites, only the
senators had formal seats of honour. Something had to be done for the
dignitas of the class.

One of the tribunes of 67 was L. Roscius Otho from the Latin town of
Lanuvium, whose family was newly rich from the commercial exploi-
tation of empire.3° He succeeded in persuading the assembly to reserve
the first fourteen rows of theatre seating for gentlemen of equestrian
rank, perhaps as defined by the 400,000 sesterces property qualification
(doubtless in some way invoking ‘the custom of our ancestors’).3! Two
years later, Cicero alleged that the Roman people had ‘demanded’ the
Lex Roscia — but that was before a jury, and Roscius’ subsequent
unpopularity with the plebs tells a different story.>2 A third body, neither
plebs nor patres, had been legally defined; the pasres’ monopoly of visible
honour had been broken.

Two of Roscius’ colleagues, A. Gabinius and C. Cornelius, were
making the running against senatorial corruption and incompetence.
Gabinius’ first proposal was to demobilize part of Lucullus’ army and
transfer the provincia of Bithynia and Pontus to one of the consuls of 67 —
not the intransigent C. Piso, but his more flexible colleague Manius

27 Ase. 75C, Q. Cic. Comment. Pet. 19, Dio xxxvi.38.2. 2% Dio xxxvi.38.3, Sall. H. 1v.81M.

29 400,000 was the figure under Augustus, and perhaps already, for the census equester.

3 ILLRP 1262 (lead mines, Carthago Nova).

31 Cf. Wiseman 1987 (A 133) 79f on the ‘restoration’ of the right (Vell. Pat. 1.32.3, Cic. Mur. 40),
and on the equestrian census as the qualification (for example, Hor. Epist. 1.1.62—7). Linderski (CPA.
72, 1977, §5-60) and Rawson 1987 (c 250) think there was a further qualification, jury service or a
minor magistracy. 32 Cic. Com. fr. 3p (‘efflagitavit’); Plut. Cie. 13.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE TRIBUNES 333

Glabrio. Gabinius exhibited in the Forum a painting of Lucullus’
luxurious villa;33 the populace took the point, and passed the bill that
effectively stripped Lucullus of his great command.

Meanwhile, Cornelius was attacking the (largely senatorial) practice
of lending money to deputations from abroad — a way of exploiting the
empire financially without ever leaving Rome.** The provinces, as the
irate tribune told a public meeting, were being bled dry by the interest
charged by Roman profiteers. A Lex Gabinia on the subject, attested
many years later, suggests that Cornelius’ colleague may have collabor-
ated with him on getting a law passed despite the Senate’s opposition.*5

Cornelius himself now widened the range of his attack on the Senate
with a bill restating the old principle that no individual should be
exempted from the operation of the laws except by popular vote. Thatis,
no more helpful decrees passed by a few conniving fellow-senators
without even a pretence of confirmation by the people. One of
Cornelius’ tribunician colleagues, a certain P. Servilius Globulus, was
persuaded to resist this proposal. The people assembled to vote; the crier
began to read out the terms of the bill at the clerk’s dictation; Globulus
forbade both crier and clerk to speak. Cornelius himself then read the
text. C. Piso, the consul, protested furiously that Globulus’ right of
tribunician veto had been improperly infringed, but the assembly knew
which of its tribunes was doing the obstructing, and shouted him down.
Some made as if to grab him; Piso ordered his lictor to arrest them; the
crowd seized the lictor’s fasces and smashed them; stones were thrown;
Cornelius properly dismissed the assembly. A heated meeting of the
Senate followed, at which Cornelius won a majority for a compromise: a
quorum of 200 senators to be present for any vote on an ‘exemption’, and
confirmation by the people to be required, but no veto to be allowed. An
abuse had been checked, and the Senate retained something of its
authority; but what mattered more than the result was the way it had
been achieved.

Similar scenes attended Gabinius’ proposal about the pirate menace.
His bill envisaged a three-year command over all the Mediterranean and
its hinterlands up to fifty Roman miles from the sea = with fifteen legates,
a fleet of 200 ships, and the right to levy troops and draw on the public
treasury as necessary — to be entrusted to whichever of the ex-consuls the
people saw fit. The tribune did not mention Pompey’s name. There was
no need; the crowd in the Forum knew who it had to be.

So did the senators. To give such powers to one man would be
tantamount to setting up a monarchy. Piso the consul declared in the

33 Cic. Sest. 93; cf. Asc. 80€ for the technique (Cn. Ahenobarbus in 104 B.c.),

4 On Cornelius’ tribunate see Griffin 1973 (c 207) convincingly defending Asconius’ chrono-
logy against that of Dio. 35 Asc. 57-8c; Cic. Alt. v.21.12, VILI.§, 2.7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

334 9- THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

Senate that those who acted like Romulus must expect the fate of
Romulus (in one version of his legend, he was torn to pieces as a
tyrant).36 Were the events of 133 B.c. going to be played out again, with
Piso in the role of Nasica? Some senators did indeed attack Gabinius as if
to kill him, but he got out in time, and the enraged populace invaded the
senate-house.

Pompey himself kept out of the dispute. When invited to address the
people, he urged them to choose someone else and listened with
apparent reluctance as Gabinius appealed to him to heed his country’s
call. The purpose of this little comedy, typical of the disingenuous
Pompey, was to emphasize how far he differed from the office-seekers of
the senatorial elite.

When the time came for the bill to be voted on (Pompey was discreetly
away at his Alban villa) his opponents tried once more to use the
tribunate against itself, this ime with L. Trebellius and L. Roscius (the
author of the /ex theatralis). Trebellius tried to speak, and when Gabinius
would not give him leave, used his veto to stop the vote. Furious,
Gabinius postponed it and proposed a new one, to depose Trebellius
from the office of tribune as Ti. Gracchus had deposed Octavius in 133.
Now, as then, the issue was popular sovereignty; should the tribune’s
veto be allowed to obstruct the people’s will? The tribes were called.
Seventeen of the thirty-five had voted for deposition before Trebellius
yielded at last and withdrew the veto.>’ As for Roscius, unable to make
himself heard, he indicated by a gesture that two men should be chosen,
not Pompey alone. A deafening shout of anger disposed of that
argument.

Gabinius now called Catulus to the rostra. No friend of Pompey, but a
man of great authority and a patriot, Catulus did not share the
unpopularity of Lucullus and Hortensius.38 The assembly would at least
give him a hearing, and it was possible that in the face of such unanimity
he might withdraw his opposition for the sake of political harmony. He
spoke in praise of Pompey, but insisted (rightly enough) that such
powers for a single man were both dangerous and unconstitutional.
Besides, suppose Pompey were to be killed; whom would they put in his
place? ‘You!’ roared the crowd. Gabinius’ proposal was voted into law.

Consciously modest, Pompey entered the city by night. Ata renewed
meeting the enthusiastic populace voted him even more in men and
resources than Gabinius had proposed. The price of corn fell sharply as

36 Plut. Pomp. 25.4 (‘one of the consuls’).

37 Cic. Corn. fr. 51p (‘neque . . . passus est plus unius collegae sui quam universae civitatis vocem
valere et voluntatem’); cf. Plut. Ti. Gracch. 15.2.~3, App. BCiv. 1.12.51, 53; Badian 1989 (c 166).

38 See n. 6 above. His villa at Cumae was not that of a piscinarius (no mention at Varro Rust.
111.3.10, Pliny HN 1x.170-z, Macrob. Sat. 111.15.6).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE TRIBUNES 335

the dealers anticipated the resumption of regular supplies; and Pompey
left Rome to organize his forces.

But would the Gabinian plebiscite be allowed to work? C. Piso used all
the advantages of the consular imperium to frustrate it, interfering with
Pompey’s equipment programme and obstructing his recruiting
officers. Ever more urgently, the issue demanded a solution: where, in
the last resort, did sovereignty lie? Gabinius had no doubts about the
matter, and prepared a bill for the people to deprive Piso of his elected
office. A constitutional crisis was only avoided by the arrival of Pompey
himself, on a flying visit between the Ligurian harbours and Brundisium,
where his fleet was assembling for the great sweep eastwards. Huge
crowds flooded out along the Via Aurelia to escort him into the city, and
the tribunes immediately arranged a public meeting for him (no doubt in
the Circus Flaminius, outside the pomoerium) where he calmed the
situation with a conciliatory speech.3° There was no need for rash action
against the consul; everyone could see that Pompey had overwhelming
support in all sections of the citizen body. So the great man went on his
way, to achieve the most spectacular of all his victories.

Amid these excitements, and aided no doubt by the fact that he had
once served under Pompey as quaestor,* C. Cornelius was pursuing his
campaign against the abuse of senatorial authority. Now he wanted to
prevent magistrates from exempting themselves from their own juridical
edicts. The praetor’s edict, at the start of his year of office, was supposed
to lay down the procedural principles of his jurisdiction, but what if he
simply ignored it? The Romans well remembered the urban praetorship
of Verres, when what mattered was not the wording of his edict but the
whim of his mistress Chelidon.*!

And what praetors did in Rome, proconsuls did in the provinces. The
concern Cornelius had already shown for Rome’s provincial subjects
was equally evident in this proposal to control magistrates’ discretion in
jurisdiction, and thus restrict their opportunities for bribe-taking.*2 No
doubt his case was helped by the news from Africa, where the patrician
L. Sergius Catilina (a man with an ugly past in the Sullan years) was busy
extorting the maximum profit from his province. A deputation came to
complain of the proconsul’s depredations, which the Senate duly
deplored.*3 In that climate, even the most ambitious senator could hardly

39 Plut. Pomp. 27.1f, cf. Dio xxxv1.37.2. ® Asc. 57¢ (presumably in Spain).

“ Cic. 1 Verr. 1.120f; cf. Corn. fre. 37—-8P, with Lintott 1977 (c 224) 184-6, for other notorious
cases. Cornelius’ law was ‘the beginning of the end of praetorian creativity in freely reshaping
private law on an annual basis’: Frier 1983 (F 204) 230f (though much of the edict was of course
always tralatician). See pp. 548-9.

“2 Dio xxxv1.40.3-41.1 shows that Cornelius was concerned with corrupt proconsuls.

"3 Cic. Tog. Cand. fr. 3p (‘nec senatum respexit, cum gravissimis vestris decretis absens notatus
est’), Asc. 85c.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

336 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

complain about Cornelius’ proposal, and it was voted into law without
opposition.“

Not so, however, his law on electoral bribery. Here too there was an
urgent need for strong action, as the agents who undertook to deliver the
vote of the unpredictable new centuriate assembly were driven to
violence and murder as the time of the elections approached. This year, it
mattered particularly that the choice of the Roman people should not be
frustrated. One of the candidates was M. Lollius Palicanus, who as
tribune in 71, probably with Pompey’s approval, had urged the resto-
ration of the ¢ribunicia potestas. (His candidature was not going well, so
the tribunes made an issue of it by challenging Piso to say what he would
do if the centuries elected Palicanus. ‘If that happens’, said Piso, ‘I will
not declare the result.’)*5 Cornelius therefore proposed a bribery law,
including very severe penalties against agents as well as candidates.

The Senate, however, perhaps accepting the counter-argument that
such penalties would deter juries from convicting, instructed the consuls
to introduce a milder measure in their own name. Since this did not
include penalties for agents, Cornelius and his colleagues insisted that it
would prove ineffectual, and the continuing disturbances proved them
right. Twice the praetorian elections had to be abandoned even after the
centuries’ votes had been announced.* Although legislation was not
allowed in the period after the announcement of the elections, in this
crisis the Senate voted a special dispensation to Piso to put forward a
tougher version of his law, with penalties for agents reinstated. But
when he came to propose it, hostile gangs chased him out of the Forum
and he had to ask the Senate for a stronger bodyguard. (Glabrio, the
other consul, had probably left for the East by now.)

The situation was full of ironies. Piso, who had bribed his way to the
consulship the year before, was now sponsoring a bribery law which
would deprive convicted men of all senatorial privileges, even the sas
imaginum.*7 The consul who had had his fasces broken opposing
Cornelius earlier in the year was now doing Cornelius’ work for him.
The defiant upholder of senatorial authority was now beset by gangs of
men determined to corrupt the elections in the interest of ambitious
senators. It was against them, not against a popular tribune and his
supporters, that Piso now echoed the words of Nasica in 133 B.c., calling
those who wished to save the Republic to come to vote for the bribery

“ Asc. 59c (‘nemo repugnare ausus est, multis tamen invitis’).

45 Val. Max. 11.8.3. Gabinius was married to a Lollia (Suet. Iu/. 50.1), perhaps Palicanus’
daughter.

46 Cic. Leg. Man. 2; cf. Aft. 1.11.2 on the iniguitates of the praetorian elections.

47 Cic. Sul/. 88; cf. Mur. 46 on the Lex Calpurnia, ‘severissime scripta’.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE TRIBUNES 337

bill.48 The people did his bidding, and the Lex Calpurnia was passed —a
moral victory for Cornelius.

When the elections were finally held, Lollius Palicanus did not win his
consulship. The centuriate assembly preferred two worthy lightweights,
Manius Lepidus and L. Volcacius Tullus. The latter result (Tullus came
from a municipal family) evidently revealed the influence of the post-69
membership of the centuries of the equites and the prima classis.49 So too
did the success of M. Tullius Cicero of Arpinum, the first senator of his
family but elected praetor at the top of the poll, to the embarrassment of
his aristocratic competitors.5°9 The Roman people might sneer at Cicero
as an over-Hellenized intellectual,5! but they knew him also as a brilliant
forensic orator, and remembered his devastating attack on senatorial
corruption in the Verres case. It was not only his wealthy equestrian
friends whom Cicero had to thank for his election, and he made sure the
Roman crowd knew he was grateful.52 He probably never wavered,
however, in his conservative conviction that the Senate should rule — in
upright and conciliatory fashion, of course, and co-operating with the
equites in defence of property and order.

After the elections, Cornelius kept up the pressure for reform, but
without result.53 The last few months of the year were always a dull
period in Roman politics, as attention was concentrated on what might
be expected from the incoming magistrates. Cornelius therefore handed
over one of his pet projects to C. Manilius,54 who would be entering his
tribunate on 10 December. This was the restoration of P. Sulpicius’ law
(repealed by Sulla) allowing freedmen to vote in the tribe of their patron,
rather than being confined to the four urban tribes. Since many freedmen
were men of wealth,>5 that would alter the composition of the voting
units in the centuries as well as the tribal assembly, with unpredictable
results for the consular elections. There would certainly be fierce
Opposition, so it was better to leave the bill to a fresh tribune with his
whole year of office before him.

For it was clear that the tribunes’ political initiative would continue.
The great news of Pompey’s total success against the pirates seemed to

48 Cic. Corn. fr. 46p (‘at enim extremi et difficillimi temporis vocem illam, C. Corneli, consulem
mittere coegisti: qui rem p. salvam esse vellent, ad lege accipiendam adessent’); cf. Val. Max.
m.2.17, Vell. Pat. 11.3.1, Plut. Ti. Gracch. 19.3.

#9 On the Volcacii see Wiseman 1971 (A 130) 276f (contra, Syme 1979-88 (A 119) 11 603f on the
origo); on Lepidus see Sumner 1964 (c 268) 87. ,

%® Cic. Tog. Cand. fre. 5, 23P (C. Antonius); the others were L. Cassius Longinus and (probably) P.
Sulpicius Galba. 51 Plut. Cie. 5.2 (apparently referring to the seventies B.c.).

52 Cic. Leg. Man. 71 (‘me hoc honore praeditum, tantis vestris beneficiis adfectum’), cf. 2, 58, 69.

53 Asc. 59C (‘per quas contentiones totius tribunatus eius tempus peractum est’).

54 So at least it was alleged at his trial: Cic. Corn. fr. rop.

55 Dio t1.10.4, cf. App. BCiv. tv.34.146; examples in Treggiari 1969 (G 247) 2396.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

338 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

confirm and ratify all that had been achieved in this annus mirabilis of the
restored tribunician power. It may not have been coincidence that one of
the tribunes just elected for 66 was the nephew and namesake of C.
Memmius, scourge of the corrupt nobility forty-five years before.5 The
Sullan reaction had been effectively reversed.

But the Sullan oligarchy was powerful and tenacious, with an
influence both inside and outside the Senate quite disproportionate to its
small numbers. Piso had been a formidable opponent; if he had failed,
that was mainly due to the talismanic presence of Pompeius Magnus, an
advantage next year’s tribunes would not enjoy. And Piso had been too
openly the champion of indefensible privilege, too blatantly moved by
anger and envy against Pompey.* If the oligarchs, however speciously,
could regain the moral initiative, then all the hopes of the new /ustrum

would be dashed.

III. POMPEY’S ABSENCE

Manilius did everything wrong. When the tribunes entered office on 10
December, he tried to exploit the absence of consular opposition (Piso
had no doubt left for his province) by pushing through the bill on
freedmen’s votes before the new consuls took office on 1 January. But he
did it by not allowing the full statutory period to elapse between the
promulgation of the law and the voting on it; and the day of the vote
itself, at the end of the year, was the day announced by the praetor for the
movable festival of the Compitalia, when no voting asssemblies should
be held.58 Not only that, but he used his enthusiastic crowd of supporters
(slaves as well as freedmen, his enemies said) to block off access to the
Forum, thus enabling one of the new quaestors to make a name for
himself by charging through with a gang of his own, killing with
impunity since the victims were in the wrong.®? On the first day of the
new year the Senate, witha clear conscience, declared the law invalid.
Popular frustration was made worse by the news from the East.

Glabrio, sent by the Roman people to finish the war Lucullus was
prolonging, had discovered that there was much more to do than just
take the glory, and halted in Bithynia. Mithridates had taken full
advantage, and it seemed the war was slipping out of Rome’s control.
Would Asia be threatened again? The financiers were getting anxious,
and that meant dearer credit for the ordinary citizen.6° Meanwhile, in

56 Sall. Ing. 27.2, 30.3; stemma in Sumner 1973 (B 115) 87.

57 Plut. Pomp. 27.1; cf. Dio xxxvi.26.1f (Pompey’s speech), 33.3 (Catulus’ speech).

58 Cic. Corn. fr. 11 (‘celeritas actionis’), Asc, 65c, Dio xxxvi.42.4f; Gell. NA x.24.3 (praetor),
Varro Ling. v1.20 (no voting). 5° Asc. 45c (L. Ahenobarbus, praised for constantia).

© Cf. Cic. Leg. Man. 18f (‘non enim possunt una in civitate multi rem ac fortunas amittere, ut non
plures secum in eandem trahant calamitatem’).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY’S ABSENCE 339

Crete, Roman commanders were even fighting each other, as Metellus
disputed the authority of Pompey’s legates to operate in his province. (It
is not clear whether Pompey’s imperium had been defined as equal or
superior to that of other proconsuls; if the latter, it was a new and
ominous step.)®

The solution was obvious, and Manilius immediately proposed it.
Lucullus should be recalled from Pontus, Glabrio from Bithynia,
Marcius Rex from Cilicia; all the Roman forces in Asia Minor, and the
whole conduct of the war, should be entrusted to Pompey. Lucullus’
friends protested, but in vain. Catulus and Hortensius held out in
determined opposition, as they had against Gabinius the year before; but
this time, in the light of Pompey’s brilliant success against the pirates, it
was even harder to make their case. Four ex-consuls, including P.
Servilius the conqueror of Isauria, supported the proposal;® so did the
praetor M. Cicero, in his first ever speech from the rostra.

Cicero was polite about Lucullus, as he was also to Catulus and
Hortensius (he would need at least their acquiescence when he came to
stand for the consulship), but the main theme of his eloquence gave the
thronging citizens in the Forum exactly what they wanted to hear. It was
their empire and their revenues that were in danger; they had ended the
pirate menace by putting Pompey in charge; magistrates and com-
manders were elected to do sheir bidding, not make private fortunes for
themselves. Pompey, of couse, was not only a military genius but also a
man who could keep his hands off other people’s property, including
their wives and children.® Manilius’ law passed, without any of the strife
that had attended the vote on the pirate command.

Pompey’s enemies had hoped to get Gabinius before a jury, pour
décourager les autres. That was now impossible (Gabinius left Rome and is
next heard of east of the Euphrates), but C. Cornelius was still available
for prosecution. P. Cominius and his brother, men of equestrian rank
from the former Latin colony of Spoletium, charged Cornelius before
the treason court. On the day set for the trial, the praetor failed to appear,
leaving the Cominii to face ugly threats against their lives if they did not
drop the charge. The consuls, who had come to the Forum to support
Cornelius, prevented murder being done, but the prosecutors were
chased into some nearby premises. The following day the praetor
appeared but the prosecutors did not. Some said the Cominii had been
bribed to abandon the case. They had certainly been terrorized.

The claims of the tribunes and their supporters to represent law and

61 Velleius (11.31, 2) calls it ‘imperium aequum . . . cum pro consulibus’.

62 Cic. Leg. Man. 68; the others were C. Curio cos. 76, C. Cassius cos. 73, Cn. Lentulus cos. 72.
63 Cic. Leg. Man. 63f, 65f; see n. 18 above. * Dio xxxvit.5.2z (as a legate of Pompey).
6 Asc. 59-6oc, Cic. Corn. fre. 13-17P.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

340 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

justice suffered another setback when C. Licinius Macer — the ideologue,
as it were, of the restored tribunate — was found guilty of extortion
on return from the province which he governed after his praetorship of
68. Cicero was the presiding praetor. As he wrote to his friend Atticus,
‘my handling of C. Macer’s case has won popular approval to a quite
extraordinary degree. Though I was favourably disposed to him, I
gained far more from popular sentiment by his conviction than I could
have gained from Ais gratitude if he had been acquitted.’ Macer had let
the Roman people down. When he heard the verdict, he killed himself.

That juries and magistrates alike were taking a particularly strict line is
suggested also by the extraordinary events at this year’s consular
elections. The successful candidates were P. Sulla and P. Autronius
Paetus; Sulla was Pompey’s brother-in-law, which no doubt outweighed
his hated name.® But once again the campaign had been corrupt, and the
two losers, L. Torquatus and L. Cotta, prosecuted Sulla and Autronius
for bribery.68 Violent disturbances broke out, but the juries defied the
stone-throwers and condemned both the consuls-elect.®

The vote had to be held again, and this time there might be a new
candidate. L. Catilina, who had just returned from Africa, still dogged by
provincial embassies complaining about his depredations there,
announced that he would be seeking election. A trial for extortion
seemed certain — but who would prosecute? The Senate believed him
guilty, and passed stern resolutions about it; but Catiline was tough and
ruthless; it would take a brave man to make an enemy of him. Besides, he
had the support of the deposed consuls-elect and their strong-arm men.
If he were elected, or even allowed to stand, it would be a deplorable
victory for corruption over the rule of law. Volcacius Tullus, the
presiding consul, called his advisers and decided not to allow Catiline’s
candidature.7° Cotta and Torquatus were duly declared elected.

There were other bribery trials that year; the ‘struggle for office’ (a
phrase that was now more than a mere metaphor) was not confined to
consular candidates. A certain L. Vargunteius was also found guilty,
despite being defended by Hortensius.”! The strictness of the juries

% Cic. Att. 1.4.2 (trans. Shackleton Bailey), Vat. Max. 1x.12.7, Plut. Cie. 9.1f.

67 According to Dio (xxxv1.44.3) he was the dictator’s nephew; Cicero (Of. 11.29) says merely
‘propinquus’. The relationship with Pompey is inferred from a combination of Oros. v.23.12 and
Cic. OFr. 11.3.2.

68 It was Torquatus’ son, later praetor 49, who prosecuted Sulla on his father’s behalf (Cic. Fiz.
11.62).

6 Cic. Sull. 15 (‘ille ambitus iudicium tollere ac disturbare primum conflato voluit gladiatorum ac
fugitivorum tumultu, deinde, id quod vidimus omnes, lapidatione atque concursu’) — blaming
Autronius alone for forensic reasons.

70 Cic. Tog. Cand. fr. 16p, Asc. 89¢, cf. Sall. Cat. 18.2f; Torquatus ap. Cic. Su//. 68 (‘dixisti hunc, ut
Catilinam consulem efficeret, contra patrem tuum operas et manum comparasse’) — blaming Sulla
alone for forensic reasons.

1 Cic. Sull. 6, cf. Sall. Cat. 28.1 and Linderski 1963 (c 219). For the Aonoris certamen,. Cic. Sull. 49.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY’S ABSENCE 341

reflected popular feeling, but the clean-up of public life had perilous
consequences. It left dangerously ambitious men looking for a way — any
way — to recover their position and recoup their wasted fortune, in a
society where poverty and discontent offered easy opportunities to
recruit armed bands for violent action.72

In the latter part of the year attention was concentrated on the return
of Lucullus, which his enemies were eager to publicize as the deserved
humiliation of an archetypal profiteer. Memmius the tribune had already
prepared the way with a prosecution of Lucullus’ brother Marcus for his
acts as quaestor under Sulla in 83. Lucullus himself, a close friend of the
dictator, had been guardian of his son Faustus Sulla (now of age), who
was the most conspicuous of all the beneficiaries of the Sullan regime and
from whom frequent attempts had already been made to recover the
public moneys that had found their way into the family funds.”3 But
Faustus’ twin sister was married to Memmius.% So an unfriendly
colleague was able simultaneously to win popular applause, embarrass
Memmius, and take some of the pressure off Lucullus, by bringing an
action against Faustus for embezzlement of public funds. Cicero, as
praetor, gave it as his opinion that the principle was excellent but the
time not ripe; the jury of the gaaestio de peculatu took the view that the
tribunician power gave too great an advantage to the prosecution, and
did not allow the case to continue.’5

It may have been for the same reason that M. Lucullus was acquitted,
and that Memmius’ threat to prosecute Lucullus himself came to
nothing. Similarly, it seems that young P. Clodius, who was Lucullus’
brother-in-law and the main agitator behind the mutiny in his army at
Nisibis, had been threatening both the Luculli with prosecution, but to
no effect.”6 Eager to stamp on real abuse, juries were evidently unwilling
to act merely as the agents of private feuds. Lucullus knew the proper
way to deal with Clodius; as soon as he reached home he divorced his
wife in circumstances that brought the maximum discredit on her
brother.”

What mattered most was the question of his triumph. This was a
straightforward ideological issue between plebs and paéres: a majority in
the Senate was willing to give Lucullus his due, but the assembly, at

72 See Brunt 1971 (A 16) 551-7 for the background. E.g. Cic. Su//. 15 (gladiators and fugitivi, 66),
Suet. Jud. 10.2 (gladiators, 65), Cic. Tog. Cand. fr. 12p (fugitivi, 64), Sull. 54 (gladiators, 63), Sall. Car.
56.5 (fugitivi, 63), Suet. Aug. 3.1 (fugitivi, 61).

7 Plut. Luc. 4.4 (guardian), 38.1 (Memmius); Cic, Leg. Agr. 1.12, Asc. 73¢ (‘res saepe erat
agitata’). 4 Joseph. BJ 1.149, 154 (Faustus under Pompey in 63); Asc. 28c (Fausta).

75 Cic. Clu. 94, Corn. fr. 34, Asc. 73C; tribune not named, but ‘non modo non seditiosus sed etiam
seditiosis adversarius’.

76 Memmius: Plut. Caf. Min. 29.3. Clodius: Cic. Har. Resp. 42 (“Romaeque recenti adventu suo
cum propinquis suis decidit ne reos faceret’).

7 Cic. Mil. 73, cf. for example, Plut. Luc. 34.1, Cie. 29.3 (evidence of incest).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

342 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

Memmius’ urging against the man who had prolonged the war for his
own enrichment, refused to allow it. The same treatment was given to Q.
Metellus Creticus (as he now called himself), who had defied Pompey,
and to Q. Marcius Rex as well.’8 The presence of these three nobles in the
suburbs, tending their fading laurels and doubtless feeding as many of
their loyal soldiers as might make a decent procession if ever their
triumphs could be authorized, was a potent and humiliating symbol of
the tribunes’ power and the authority of the people.

Their friends were waiting for December, when Manilius’ tribunate
would come to an end and he would lose immunity from prosecution.
The charge — extortion, possibly as quaestor”? — was well chosen, calling
Manilius to account not for his contentious tribunate, a matter that
might divide a jury on political lines, but for misbehaviour in the
provinces, on which they could be expected to take a unanimously severe
view.80 The prosecutors made their denunciation to Cicero, the praetor
in charge of the quaestio de repetundis, on 27 December. Instead of
allowing the usual ten days for the defence to seek legal advice, Cicero set
the start of the trial for 29 December, the last day of his year of office.
Summoned by the tribunes to explain himself before the indignant
populace, Cicero protested that he had been trying to help Manilius; the
praetor in charge next year might not be so sympathetic. Then Cicero
assured the people, in a rousing attack on Pompey’s enemies, that he
would now be glad to appear in Manilius’ defence.

The Forum was full of whispered rumours. Catiline was there, visibly
armed. Some said, or said later, that Sulla and Autronius intended to
murder the new consuls and appear in the Forum, complete with lictors,
in the office they had lost in the courts.8! That did not happen. Cotta and
Torquatus duly entered on their consulship, but the rumours persisted,
centred now on Catiline anda tough young aristocrat called Cn. Piso. A
coup d'état was supposedly scheduled for 5 February. That did not happen
either, but the Senate took it seriously enough to give the consuls a
bodyguard. One of the tribunes vetoed a senatorial investigation. Piso,
though only an ex-quaestor, was sent off to Spain with praetorian
imperium 82

It was in this uneasy atmosphere that Manilius was brought to trial in

78 Cic. Acad. 1.3 (Lucullus), Sall. Cat. 30.4.

7 Cic. Corn. fr. 8P;on Manilius’ trial, see Phillips 1970 (c 236). Ramsey 1980 (c 239) thinks M. was
prosecuted under the heading quo ea pecunia, in which case he need not have been a magistrate.

8 Cf. Cic. C/w. 116: juries treated extortion like treason when assessing damages.

81 Cic. Cat. 1.15 (Catilina cum tele), Sull. 11, 68; cf. Suet. Iu/. 9.1f, Sall. Cat. 18.5.

82 Cic. Tog. Cand. fr. 22P (with Asc. 92c), Muar. 81; Dio xxxv1. 44.4f; Sall. Cat. 18.6-19.1 (giving
the date); ILLRP 378. Later in the year, one of the consuls by appearing for Catiline at his trial
indicated that he disbelieved the rumours (Cic. Sué/. 81). Most modern scholars are also sceptical
about this so-called ‘First Catilinarian Conspiracy’; see esp. Seager 1964 (Cc 256).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY’S ABSENCE 343

January. Cicero, as promised, appeared for the defence. But Manilius’
friends preferred more direct methods, and broke up the court by
force.83 The Senate instructed the consuls to guarantee security; the trial
resumed; Manilius failed to appear, and was found guilty. The violence
and rumours of violence in late 66 and early 65 were later to provide
Cicero and others with ammunition to use against Catiline, and led to the
stories of a preliminary Catilinarian conspiracy that never came to
fruition.

What the sorry tale of recent events revealed was the fallibility of the
people’s champions. Twenty-five years later an experienced politician
described the newly aggressive tribunate of the sixties as marking the
start of a period when the protectors of the people’s rights were as selfish
and ambitious as the aristocratic ‘establishment’ which defended its own
supremacy in the name of the Senate. Both sides were brutal and
extreme; it was only Pompey’s absence which gave the oligarchy the
tactical advantage.84 That was perhaps too schematically cynical; but
certainly the loss of the moral initiative was a blow to popular
confidence.

As a direct result of Manilius’ débacle, the prosecutors of Cornelius
were emboldened to resume the case they had abandoned the previous
year. Cornelius, once again facing the quaestio de maiestate, did not dare to
have more than a few supporters with him for fear of giving his enemies
the chance to allege a riot. Against him was ranged the full weight of
senior senatorial authority — Catulus, Hortensius, Metellus Pius, M.
Lucullus, the princeps senatus Mam. Lepidus — all prepared to testify that
Cornelius two years before had read out the terms of his bill in defiance of
a tribune’s veto. Tey were now the defenders of the people’s rights!85

Even more conscious than usual of the crowd in the Forum surround-
ing the court, Cicero in his defending speech met the challenge head on:
the principes were trying to exploit the effect of Manilius’ behaviour, and
the absence of Pompey, to humble the plebs and tarnish the whole
concept of tribunician power. Manilius, he claimed, had been urged on
by powerful and unscrupulous individuals like Catiline and Cn. Piso. But
the great cause of the people’s tribunes remained unsullied — and he took
his audience through the whole heroic history of the tribunate, from the
First Secession to their own time.86 He was tactful but firm with the
distinguished witnesses: was Cornelius to be sacrificed to the hostility of
a few men of wealth and power, and their contemptible hangers-on? The
jury must take thought for the liberty of Roman citizens, and for the man

83 Cie. Corn. frr. 12, 19P; Asc. Goc.

* Sall. Cat. 38.1-39.1, describing the conflict in terms of plebs and patres (cf. n. 15 above).

85 Asc. Go-1C (‘etenim prope tollebatur intercessio, si id tribunis permitteretur’).

8 Cic. Corn. fre. 48, 19, 49-53P; the speech is reconstructed by Kumaniecki 1970 (B Go) 10-29.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

344 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

who had called the people to the struggle against a cruel tyranny.8’
Cornelius, personally respectable and a protégé of Pompey’s, was
acquitted; the fact that all ten tribunes of the year supported him suggests
that they really did see the tribunate itself as in danger.

Soon the plebs had something else to cheer. At the start of the first of
the annual series of public festivals (/udi Megalenses, 4 April), the aediles’
decorations of the city centre were seen to include gilded monuments to
the victories of Marius, banned from public sight for seventeen years.
This was the work of C. Julius Caesar, who was busy spending a fortune
of his creditors’ money on building a popular reputation. He was already
well known for public-spirited generosity as curator of the Via Appia;
now his aedilician games, and a gladiatorial show on his own account,
were of a splendour that put his optimate colleague M. Bibulus wholly in
the shade. Caesar had earlier caught public attention with his funeral
speech for his aunt, Marius’ widow, and he had gone out of his way to
cultivate the inhabitants of the Transpadane region, where Marian
veterans had been settled a generation before, and where the natives, and
perhaps some early settlers of Italian origin, were aggrieved at not
having full Roman citizenship.88

Catulus, whose dignitas suffered particularly as a result of the rehabili-
tation of Marius, accused Caesar in the Senate of bringing battering-rams
to bear on the Republican constitution.8° His words may seem unneces-
sarily portentous, but Rome was in a nervous and unsettled mood.
Freak thunderstorms during the winter had done some damage on the
Capitol, with lightning striking even a bronze image of the she-wolf.
The saruspices consulted their volumes of Etruscan brontoscopy, and
warned of fire, plague and destruction, the abolition of law (some bronze
law texts had been struck by lightning) and civil disruption at the hands
of ‘men of noble birth’.% Catiline? P. Sulla? Cn. Piso? Caesar? Or perhaps
P. Lentulus Sura, consul in 71, expelled by the censors and now
rebuilding his career, who believed that the Sibyl’s verses prophesied
supreme power for three Cornelii — Cinna, Sulla and himself. At the
haruspices’ suggestion, the consuls ordered a splendid new statue of
Jupiter to be placed high on a column on the Capitol. They also
announced that elections for the censorship would be held; the time was
due for a new Justrum.

Meanwhile a tribune, C. Papius, put to the vote an “aliens act’ designed
to expel from Rome (no doubt temporarily) non-citizens pretending that

87 Cic. Corn. frr. 1-4, 11-14P; Kumaniecki 1970 (B 60) 30-3.

88 See Crawford 1985 (B 145) 185; Wiseman 1987 (A 133) 329-31. The Transpadanes were mostly
Latins, which meant that their ex-magistrates had Roman citizenship; see pp. 75~6.

89 Plut. Caes. 6.4; cf. n. 6 above. The law making Marius a public enemy was still technically

valid. % Cic. Div. 1.20, Caf. 11.19.
1 Cic. Caf. 11.9, 11; Sall. Cat. 47.2; Phut. Cie. 17.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POMPEY’S ABSENCE 345

they had the Roman franchise; and a new quaestio was set up to
investigate this kind of fraud. Preventing the usurpation of citizenship,
especially with elections approaching, could seem another blow against
corruption. The bill may however have been chiefly aimed at the
Transpadani, and thus at Caesar; an ambiguous passage of the historian
Cassius Dio prevents us being sure of the object.%

One man who would not be standing in the elections was Catiline. His
trial for extortion had finally been arranged, and his condemnation was
confidently expected. But the prosecutor, young P. Clodius, was
helpfully selective in the challenging of the jury, and the resulting panel
looked as if they were quite willing to be impressed by Catiline’s
distinguished character witnesses — several consulares (Catulus was an old
friend), and even one of this year’s consuls, L. Torquatus, complete with
curule chair and insignia of office. Seeing this, Cicero offered to appear
for the defence; if Catiline was going to be acquitted, and therefore able
to stand at next year’s consular elections when Cicero himself would be a
candidate, it would be worth having him under an obligation. But
Catiline perhaps saw that too, and was confident of acquittal without
Cicero’s help.

This year’s elections passed off without incident. The consuls for 64
would be L. Caesar (a distant cousin of the aedile) and C. Marcius
Figulus.™% The censors, who entered office immediately on election, were
Catulus and Crassus. It is a sign both of the inadequacy of our sources
and of the unobtrusiveness of his political style that we hear practically
nothing of Crassus between consulship and censorship. He had given his
support to Manilius (who tried to blame him for the tactical fiasco of
December 67); to Licinius Macer; and perhaps also to Catiline and Cn.
Piso in the early months of 65.95 But of where he stood on the great issues
of the day, especially as they affected his old rival and enemy Pompey, we
know nothing. All we can be sure of is that he was a man of great
influence, whom nobody liked to cross.%

The censors did not agree on a programme. Crassus wanted the
Transpadani included in the /ustrum as Roman citizens. Catulus refused
to consider it (it would have given Crassus and Caesar great gratia).
Crassus wanted Ptolemy Alexander’s testament recognized and Egypt

% Dio xxxvit.g.5; cf. Gruen 1974 (C 209) 409-11.

93 Cic. Att. 1.1.1, 2.1, with Phillips 1970 (B 86); Har. Resp. 42, Pis. 23 (Clodius as ‘Catilinae
praevaricator’); Sw//. 81 (Torquatus), Cae/. 13f (distinguished friends); cf. Oros. v1.3.1, Sall. Cat. 35
(Catulus).

* Caesar. Sumner 1976 (c 270) for the relationship. Figulus: possibly identical with the
(Minucius) Thermus of Cic. Ass. 1.1.2; see Shackleton Bailey ad /oc.

95 Dio xxxvi.42.3; Plut. Cie. 9.1; Cic. de consiliis suis (on which see Rawson 1982 (B 94)) ap. Asc.
85c, g2c, cf. Suet. In/. 9.1f. He was also a juror in the Cornelius trial (Asc. 76c).

% E.g. Plut. Crass. 7.9 (76 B.c.), Sall. Cat. 48.5 (63), Cic. Att. 1.18.6 (‘Crassus verbum nullum
contra gratiam’, 60).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

346 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

and Alexandria annexed under direct Roman rule (see ch. 8a, p. 271; 8¢,
p- 319). Catulus strongly objected. The latter proposal was urged by the
tribunes — great new revenues for the Roman people, and perhaps a new
command for Pompey when he had finished with Mithridates. Crassus
assured them that it would be a just war, like that against Jugurtha
(remember Marius!), but his opponents successfully represented it as
mere profiteering. ‘Shall this be our imperial policy’, demanded Cicero,
who always deplored Crassus’ greed, ‘to make allies of those who give us
money, and enemies of those who do not?” Unwilling to prolong a
political stalemate, the censors resigned.

Like Manilius’ trial, the Alexandrian issue enabled the Senate to show
itself as the champion of sound moral standards. Despite the encourage-
ment of Cicero’s splendid oratory in the speech pro Cornelio, the popular
movement was in danger of losing its way — not just because its leaders
were fallible, and its great symbolic champion far away, but also because
the nature of its struggle was changing. The old polarities — plebs and
patres, libertas and dominatio— seemed less applicable when the laws were
being flouted by ruthlessly ambitious younger men with their fortunes
still to make, whose anti-establishment rhetoric carried a specious
attraction for the under-privileged of Rome. Among the consequences
was Cicero’s shift, not away from Pompey, but towards the Senate. He
did not trust either Crassus or Caesar.

One symptom of the way things were going was the exploitation of
district and trade associations (collegia) as a basis for electoral violence
and bribery. No tribune could hope to get the assembly to ban the
organizations around which most humble citizens’ social life revolved.
Effectively, the populace was now conniving in the corruption of public
life which its tribunes had set out to curb five years earlier. The consuls of
64 had to rely on a senatus consultum to disband the collegia.°8 When they
proposed a new and mote severe bribery law, it was vetoed by a
tribune.°® And when they had censors elected —to carry out what Crassus
and Catulus had failed to achieve, the moral cleansing of the Roman state
in the eyes of the gods — the tribunes were afraid of expulsion from the
Senate, and forced the censors’ abdication. There would be no /ustrum,
no new start — and now it was the people’s champions who prevented it.

IV. THE PEASANTS REVOLT AND THE BANKRUPTS’ PLOT

It may be ultimately to Licinius Macer’s indignant pen that we owe a
vignette from Rome’s ‘usable past’: an episode attributed to the fifteenth

7 Cic. De Reg. Alex. fre. 1-2, 6-7p, Leg. Agr. 11.44; Plut. Crass. 13.1. Tribunes: Suet. In/. 11.1
(alleging Caesar’s involvement).

98 Asc. 7c; cf. Lintott 1968 (a 62) 77-83, and Treggiari 1969 (G 247) 168-77.

9 Cic. Tog. Cand. fr. 14p, Asc. 83c (‘cum in dies licentia ambitus augeretur’): Q. Mucius
Orestinus.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PEASANTS REVOLT 347

year of the Republic, portraying the misery of a gallant old soldier who
had lost his land through no fault of his own, fallen into debt and been
seized by a creditor, to be hauled off to a slave-prison and beaten.'!© For
the sixties B.c., that was not just melodrama. A poor citizen farming far
beyond the limit of the tribunes’ auxi/ium at the first milestone might well
have bitter experience of the ergastulum and the carnificina when bad
harvests or bad health, his own misjudgements or rich neighbours’
chicanery or violence, forced him to borrow or, if a tenant, fall behind
with the rent. Many were old soldiers, even Sullan colonists; for the
veterans of Sulla’s legions must not be confused with the great profiteers
of the proscriptions, whose estates covered whole territories.!0! Fifteen
years on, some of the veteran settlers were as desperate as the peasants
they had dispossessed, with the added resentment of disappointed hopes.
All were equally at the mercy of the man who was both landowner and
money-lender, with little chance of relief from the praetor’s tribunal.
Worst affected were the small farmers of Etruria, north-west Italy
(Picenum and the ager Gallicus) and Apulia — all areas with a high
concentration of Sullan colonies.!

Two other types of indebtedness combined with this rural crisis to
bring about what the saruspices had foretold. One was the vicious circle
of usury in the provinces — borrowing from Roman financiers to pay
Rome’s tribute and bribe her governors — which Cornelius had tried to
control as tribune in 67. His opponent on that occasion, the consul C.
Piso, had spent the last two years as proconsul of the two Gauls; now in 64
he was succeeded in Transalpina by L. Murena. Piso had been brutal in
extortion; Murena was strict in enforcing repayments to Roman money-
lenders, but turned a blind eye to the illegal profits of his own staff. The
result was to drive to desperation the Allobroges of Transalpine Gaul,
‘overwhelmed by public and private debt’.!%

A very different type of debt problem was caused by the ruthlessly
competitive ambition of certain senators, who borrowed hugely in order
to bribe their way to the consulships and provincial commands that
would make their fortunes, to cover their inevitably large legitimate
political expenses, or to build grand palaces and villas and in other ways
keep up with new standards of luxury. They were landowners, but what

100 Livy 11.23.3-7, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. v1.26.1—2; cf. Sall. H. 111.48.27é (Macer on flogging and
imprisonment of agrestes).

10t Eg. Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.8 on C. Quinctius Valgus and the ager Hirpinus, cf. ILLRP 523, 565,
598, 645-6. See Brunt 1971 (A 16) 300-12, 1988 (C 30) 250f.

102 Cic. Cat. 11.6, Swll. 53, Sest. 9; Sall. Cat. 27.1, 30.2-5, 42.1, and esp. 28.4 for an analysis of the
situation in Etruria. Sullan colonies (pp. 203-3 above): for Apulia, cf. Hor. Sat. 1.6.73 (Venusia),
ILLRP 592 (Ausculum).

103 Sall. Cat. 40.1. Piso: Sall. Cat. 49.2; Cic. Att. 1.13.2 (‘pacificatorem Allobrogum’, surely
ironical). Murena: Cic. Mur. 42, cf. 69 for the approval of the societates. Staff: Cic. Har. Resp. 42 on P.

Clodius (‘mortuorum testamenta conscripsit, pupillos necavit, nefarias cum multis scelerum
pactiones societatesque conflavit’).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

348 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

they needed was ready cash in large sums; and they were not prepared to
sell their estates (which provided the property-qualification on which
their status depended) if their creditors insisted on repayment.’ Two
notorious examples — C. Antonius and L. Catilina — were among the
candidates at the consular elections in 64. Not surprisingly they fought a
very dirty campaign. 105

Only three of the seven candidates — Antonius, Catiline, and Cicero —
had a realistic chance of success, so the two nobles pooled their resources
to defeat the ‘new man’. Cicero fought back with a blistering attack on
their moral credentials. One well-attested episode he emphasized par-
ticularly — the brutal murder of the popular hero M. Marius Gratidianus,
whose severed head Catiline had supposedly brought through the streets
of Rome to give to Sulla. !%

The reminder came at an opportune time. For years now Sulla’s
executioners had enjoyed their rewards without fear of prosecution,
sheltering behind an exemption clause in the Lex Cornelia, while many
of his friends had directly acquired confiscated property, which should
have been auctioned for the treasury’s benefit. But this year the president
of the guaestio de sicariis (which dealt with assassins, see ch. 13, pp. 521-3)
was Caesar, whose own anti-Sullan record was unimpeachable, and
the quaestor urbanus was M. Porcius Cato, who insisted on all debts to the
public treasury being paid at once and in full. Cato, a man of optimate
conviction but like his famous ancestor of rigid probity, demanded that
the hit-men of the proscriptions should surrender their ill-gotten gains.
Caesar, for his part, allowed charges of murder to be brought against
them, and already two notoriously guilty men had been successfully
prosecuted, 107

Nothing could be more popular than this righting of an injustice that
had rankled with Rome’s citizens for nearly twenty years. Cicero too,
with his speech for Pompey’s command and the defence of Cornelius,
had laid up a great fund of popular approval, which he could now draw
on for his candidature. Catiline’s supporters, on the other hand, seemed
to be mainly dissolute young men with expensive tastes.!08 But Catiline
was a patrician; he and Antonius (son of the famous orator and consul)
insisted again and again on the traditional assumption that noble birth
wasa necessary qualification for the consulship, and that a ‘new man’ was
unworthy of the honour. This prejudice, presented as mos maiorum, was
their only legitimate advantage. But it was a potentially decisive one, for

104 See the detailed analysis by Frederiksen 1966 (c 78).

105 Q. Cic. Comment. Pet. 39, 54 (‘fraudis atque insidiarum et perfidiae plena sunt omnia... multae
insidiae, multa fallacia, multa in omni genere vitia’); ibid. 54-7 and Cic. Tog. Cand. fr. 1p on argitio.

106 Cic. Tog. Cand. frr. g—10p, Q. Cic. Comment. Pet. 10, Asc. 84C.

107 Plut. Cat. Min. 17-18, Suet. Iu/. 11, Asc. go—-1¢ (L. Luscius, L. Bellienus).
108 Sall. Car. 14.5f, 17.6, Cic. Cael. 10, Cat. 11.8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PEASANTS REVOLT 349

it might enable the leaders of the senatorial establishment, and their
hangers-on,!° to vote with a clear conscience for two disreputable
nobles against the man who had done so much to raise Pompey to that
intolerable pinnacle of power.

In the end they did not do that. The evident unsuitability of Catiline,
the diplomacy of Cicero and his friend Atticus (an eques with many noble
friends),!!9 and above all perhaps the prospect of having that marvellous
oratorical gift under an obligation to them, finally swung their support
behind the ‘popular consul’, who was duly elected by the vote of all the
centuries.!!! Antonius just beat Catiline for second place. However,
Catiline’s luck had not completely deserted him. Prosecuted before
Caesar’s murder court later in the year, he was acquitted,!!2 surviving to
fight again for the consulship he had to win in order to avoid ruin.

As so often in recent years, the tribunician elections were hardly less
important than the consular. The college of tribunes elected for 63
included a group with firm plans for reform. They met regularly that
autumn, preparing their legislation. Chief among them was P. Servilius
Rullus, who assumed the unkempt and bearded persona of a tribune
from the days of the fifth-century secessions, one of Macer’s heroes come
back to life.'!3 Crassus and Caesar are usually thought to have been
behind him, as Cicero hints (one did not attack Crassus openly); if so,
they were playing for the people’s gratitude, and the co-operation of
Pompey, who was too popular to be opposed, but could not be allowed
too many chances to gain new influence.

On the agenda were debt and land, two fifth-century issues now
urgent once again. There is said to have been an abortive proposal to
abolish debts. The land issue was to be resolved by the radical use of
public funds.!!4 The war in the East was effectively over: Mithridates had
fled to the ends of the earth; Pompey had turned south — to Syria, Judaea,
Arabia, perhaps Egypt. Whatever the details of his settlement, there was
going to be a huge gain for the public treasury, both immediately and in
the long term, with booty and revenues from the conquered territories.
What the Gracchi had done, turning the profits of empire to the direct
benefit of the Roman citizen body, could now be done again ona grander
scale.

A redistribution of land in Italy could be effected without the necessity

109 Cf. Cic. Corn. 11 fr. 3p (‘adsentatores atque adseculae’), Asc. 61c (‘familiares principum
civitatis’).

110 Q. Cic. Comment. Pet. 5, Cic. Att. 1.2.2; for Atticus’ friends among the zobiles (for example,
Att. 1.19.6), see Shackleton Bailey 1965—7o (B 108) 1.6—12.

"1 Cic. Off. 11.59 (‘cunctis suffragiis’), Leg. Agr. 1.4 (‘una vox universi populi Romani), 1.23
(‘consul veritate, non ostentatione, popularis’). "2 Asc. gic, Cic. Alt. 1.16.9, Pés. 95.

"3 Cic. Leg. Agr. 1111-13.

4 Dio xxxvit.25.4 (xpewy droxonai); Cic. Leg. Agr. tt.10 (‘largitio. .. quae... fieri nisiexhausto
aerario nullo pacto potest’), cf. Pis. q.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

350 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

of confiscation: the treasury would buy from the present landowners, at
generous terms which encouraged them to sell, and use the publicly
owned ager Campanus and ager Stellas, the present revenues of which
would not now be missed. Sullan confiscations were to be maintained,
but some public land abroad sold off. New colonies could then be
founded, offering a fresh start to the more desperate of the rural poor, a
chance to tempt some of the urban plebs back to the land, and a ready-
made scheme for the settlement of Pompey’s veterans when they were
discharged.'!5 To administer this programme, a commission of ten
would be elected, with praetorian imperium (to give them judicial
authority) for a period of five years. Since all the tribunes at first
supported the bill, and one or two at least (Labienus and Ampius
Balbus?) are likely to have been Pompey’s men, his friends must have
approved the proposal.

The scheme also promised some incidental advantages for the Forum
and the senate-house. The dangerous unrest in rural Italy had caused a
sharp fall in land-values, with the result that ambitious senators, and
other men of property who had borrowed for immediate expenses, were
unable to turn their assets into cash when their creditors demanded
repayment.!!6 When the treasury was looking for land to buy, with
plenty of money to spend, that problem would be solved overnight. And,
the post-7o political crisis, of thwarted ambition leading to bribery and
violence in public life, would be eased by the election of Xviri. Ten men,
at least, could hope for the dignitas (and the financial opportunities) of a
five-year praetorian command with powers of jurisdiction throughout
the whole empire.

Two men who perhaps hoped to be eligible were P. Sulla and P.
Autronius Paetus. One of the new tribunes, Sulla’s half-brother L.
Caecilius Rufus, had a bill drafted for the reinstatement of Sulla and
Autronius to citizen rights and membership of the Senate. Sulla was in
Campania, allegedly collecting gladiators; Autronius was at Rome,
surrounded by an aggressively demonstrative crowd of supporters. The
atmosphere was tense, and not helped by the rumours of abolition of
debts and redistribution of land, which had the effect of making credit
tighter than ever.!17

Cicero had not been invited to the planning sessions, and he was
profoundly suspicious of those who were.!!8 His ideal of a peaceful, law-
abiding and harmonious republic had no room either for ruthless
gamblers on the make or for lavish public spending and upheavals of the

"5 Cic. Leg. Agr. u, esp. 31 (Gracchan precedent), 67f (generous terms), 7o (urban plebs), 79
(rustict), 80-3 (Campanian and overseas vectigalia). See Sumner 1966 (c 269) for the political
background and the probable relevance of Pompey’s veterans.

"6 Val. Max. rv.8.3 (‘propter tumultum pretiis possessionum deminutis’), Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.68.

"7 Cic. Sull. 53~5 (P. Sulla), 62-4 (Caecilius), 66 (Autronius); Leg. Agr. 1.8 (‘sublata erat de foro
fides’). "8 Cic. Leg. Agr. 1.22 (‘ei quos multo magis quam Rullum timetis’), 11.12, 65.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT 351

property market. The tribunes were confident of the other consul’s
support, but Antonius had no stomach fora fight and allowed himself to
be bought off by a deal over the consular provinces. In the lot, Cicero had
drawn Macedonia and Antonius Cisalpine Gaul; now an exchange was
publicly agreed. Antonius was the gainer (the hapless Greeks would give
him more chance of restoring his shattered fortunes than the self-
confident Latin colonists of the Transpadana), and this beneficium was his
excuse for inactivity.!!9

On the first day of 63 B.c., the festival crowds escorting the new
consuls to the meeting of the Senate on the Capitol were doubtless
unusually anxious. After the routine religious business the first item on
the agenda was the proposal about Autronius and Sulla. One of the
praetors, on Sulla’s behalf, announced that Sulla no longer wished his
case to be brought to the people. Caecilius Rufus immediately withdrew
his bill. He also (it is not clear why) abandoned his tribunician colleagues
on the land and debt questions, supporting Cicero’s attack and announc-
ing that he would veto Rullus’ land bill if it came to the vote.!2° Antonius
kept quiet, and Cicero carried the Senate in opposition to the proposed
legislation.

A few days later he carried the people too, appealing, ih a speech of
brilliant chicanery, to the ‘true’ popular tradition of liberty against
tyranny — Rullus’ board of ten would be ten kings, their colonies military
garrisons. Partly because he convinced them that the glory of their hero
Pompey was threatened, partly because the concessions Rullus had made
to those occupying confiscated land looked like corrupt connivance with
the hated Sullans (his own father-in-law was one), and partly because in
the last resort the urban plebs had little interest in the problems of the
countryside, Cicero succeeded in destroying the land bill and enhancing
his own popularity at the same time.!2!

He needed all that popularity in the next few months, as he paid off the
political debts of his election. He defended C. Piso at his trial for
extortion in Gaul (Caesar was the prosecutor) and opened the gates at
last for Lucullus to hold his long-delayed triumph.'22 Envious and
ambitious men brooded bitterly on the power of the few. As Sallust
makes Catiline say:

It is they who own kings, tetrarchs, revenues; it is to them that peoples and
nations pay tribute. All the rest of us, men of ability and character, high-born as
well as low, have become a mere mob without influence or authority, subject to
men who would live in fear of us if the Republic were in a healthy state.!23

"9 Cic. Pus. 5, Sest. 8, Leg. Agr. 11.103, cf. Q. Cic. Comment. Pet. 9 (‘Antonius umbram suam
metuit’); see Allen 1952 (c 161) 233-4.

120 Cic. Sull. 65 (‘improbis largitionibus restitit’, cf. n. 114 above).

121 Cic. Leg. Agr. and 1.

12 Cic. Flace. 98, Sall. Cat. 49.2; Cie. Acad. 11.3, Mur. 37f, 69. 123° Sall. Cat. 20.7f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

352 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

And out in the countryside of Italy an even more dangerous resentment
gathered force, now that Rullus’ bill had failed.

On 3 May, perilously close to the Latin Festival, there was a total
eclipse of the moon. Comets and meteors were seen. Augurs, haruspices
and raving soothsayers all gave the same grim warning of civil war.!24

In Rome, meanwhile, Cicero’s control of the urban populace was still
unshaken. When the /udi Apollinares opened on 6 July, the praetor L.
Roscius Otho came in for some abusive whistles from those at the back
of the theatre who resented the reservation of the first fourteen rows for
the equestrian order, which he had introduced in 67. The knights
applauded him, a riot broke out; Cicero summoned the people to the
nearby temple of Bellona, and preached the harmony of good citizens to
such effect that Otho was cheered by the whole audience when the show
resumed. !25

Cicero faced a stiffer challenge when a man who had participated in the
lynching of Saturninus (ch. 3, p. 101) was brought to trial, pretty certainly
as a warning to the Senate that the senatus consultum ultimum must not be
abused, or even (as Cicero maintained the prosecutors were holding) that
it could not in any circumstances justify putting citizens to death without
full trial. The senator C. Rabirius, now an old man, was hounded by the
tribune T. Labienus. The charge was perdue/lio, for which no standing
jury-court existed, as it did for the related but more up-to-date charge of
maiestas; senatorial and equestrian jurors would not have condemned
Rabirius. An obsolete procedure was revived, and the praetor appointed
two men to hear the case, C. Caesar and his cousin L. Caesar (cos. 64),
who condemned Rabirius to the ancient penalty — to be tied to the stake
and flogged to death in the Campus Martius. Rabirius appealed (Caesar
was not an impartial judge), so the tribune prosecuted him before the
popular assembly, in a deliberate re-creation of the conditions of the
early Republic. The people itself would take vengeance on those who
killed its champions. Cicero and Hortensius defended. Cicero argued
that Labienus was no true representative of the people — the antique
procedure was tyrannical, dating from the time of the Kings; he himself,
though (he claimed) a true consul popularis, defended the right of the
Senate to authorize action in acrisis. The trial was broken off by another
anachronistic device. The warning stood, but it had not been formally
endorsed by the people.126

In legislation too the tribunes were active, trying to demolish the
remnants of the Sullan structure. Labienus succeeded in getting popular
election of pontifices restored, but a proposal to abolish the restrictions on

1% Cie. Div. 1.18, 105, Har. Resp. 18; Pliny HN 11.137.

25 Plut. Cic. 13; the /udi Apollinares (given by the praetor urbanus, this year L. Valerius Flaccus)
identified by the proximity of the Apollo and Bellona temples.

126 Cic. Rab. Perd., esp. 15 (‘ex annalium monumentis atque ex regum commentariis’), 18 (hostile

audience); Suet. In/. 12 (appeal), Dio xxxvit.26f; Phillips 1974 (c 237).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT 353

the sons of the proscribed (ch. 6, pp. 197-8) was defeated by Cicero: the
measure was just, but would cause political upheaval.!2? (This drove
some of the men concerned into supporting Catiline and revolution.)
The greatest popular success of the year, however, came not from the
tribunes but from Caesar. Metellus Pius had recently died, and at the
election for his successor as pontifex maximus, the thirty-seven-year-old
Caesar defeated two senior consulares, one of them the leader of the
senatorial establishment, Q. Catulus. It was a calculated gamble: he had
borrowed so much to bribe the voters that failure would have meant ruin
and exile.128

Catiline faced a similar crisis at the consular elections. He was
confident of success, his following swollen by smallholders from Etruria
and elsewhere who still had hope of debt relief and agrarian reform.
Catiline boasted of his own debts, saying openly that only a poor man
could faithfully defend the poor. But the poor did not decide elections in
the comitia centuriata, so he spent what he borrowed on lavish bribery.
When Cato threatened to prosecute, Catiline’s counter-threat was of
general destruction if anyone tried to stop him.!29

Cato’s brother-in-law D. Silanus was also a candidate; the other two
were a distinguished and independent-minded jurist, Ser. Sulpicius
Rufus, and L. Licinius Murena, Lucullus’ legate. Sulpicius demanded a
new and tougher bribery law. His friend Cicero obliged, and the
assembly passed a Lex Tullia de ambitu with a penalty of ten years’ exile.
But the consul opposed Sulpicius’ suggestion of a radical change in the
structure of the centuriate assembly to make bribery more difficult. The
effect would be to weaken its plutocratic bias — a popular suggestion,
reminiscent of C. Gracchus and C. Manilius, which the Senate would not
allow to go to the vote.!30

Cicero postponed the election and challenged Catiline in the Senate
about his intentions. Catiline was defiant. The mass of the Roman people
was leaderless, like a mighty body with no head; he, Catiline, would be its
head. That sort of talk lost him the support he needed, and when Cicero,
with his bodyguard around him and a cuirass visible under his toga, went
down to the Campus Martius to preside over the election, the centuries’
votes were cast for Silanus and Murena.!3! For Catiline and his
supporters, the last legal option had failed.

127 Dio xxxvit.37.1 (Sulla had repealed the Lex Domitia of 104 B.c.); Cic. Pis. 4 (‘rei publicae
statum convulsuri’), Quint. Inst. x1.1.85.

12 Plut. Caes. 7.1-3 (P. Isauricus the other candidate), Suet. Iu/. 13. We do not know when
precisely the elections were held (Dio xxxvit. 37 is likely to be wrong).

129 Cic. Mur. 49-51.

130 Cic. Mur. 46-7 (reference to Manilius textually corrupt), ps.-Sall. ad Caes. sen. 11.8 (C.
Gracchus).

131 Cic. Mur. 51f. One of the bodyguard was P. Clodius (Plut. Cie. 29.1), who was also much
involved in the bribery (Cic. Har. Resp. 42), probably on Murena’s behalf (Cic. Dom. 118, 134 for
their adfinitas).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

354 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

That was some time in late September.132 On 18 October, in the
evening, an unknown person handed in at Crassus’ house a batch of
letters. One was addressed to Crassus himself, and proved to be an
anonymous warning to get out of Rome in secret: Catiline was planning
a massacre. With two other senior senators, Crassus went straight to
Cicero. Next morning the consul called the Senate and had the letters
read; all had the same message, that there was a plan for simultaneous
assassinations on 28 October. Meanwhile, news came from Faesulae in
north Etruria that an armed revolt was being prepared, under the
command of an ex-centurion, C. Manlius. Cicero, who had his own
informants, announced in the Senate on 21 October that Manlius’ army
would be mobilized on 27 October. The Senate passed the senatus
consultum ultimum, for the first time since the rebellion of Lepidus.1%3

Manlius’ force appeared in arms on the stated day; rumours of similar
risings came in from elsewhere in Italy. (Some ancient sources claim that
these risings had been organized by Catiline, but there is no reason to
think they were not spontaneous. The despair of the peasants will not
have been confined to north Etruria.) Q. Marcius Rex, still in possession
of imperium as he waited outside the city for permission to hold his
triumph, was sent to Faesulae to deal with Manlius. Metellus Creticus,
who had shared the humiliating three-year wait (recently prolonged by
Cicero, who suspected the two men might prove useful), was to put
down a reported slave revolt in Apulia. Cicero had allowed his own
province of Cisalpine Gaul to go into the lot for the praetors. It had fallen
to Q. Metellus Celer, who had served under Pompey in the East; that
experienced soldier was to leave forthwith, going first to Picenum to
keep control there. His colleague Q. Pompeius Rufus was to go to
Capua.!34

As Marcius Rex advanced up the Via Cassia, a deputation arrived
from Manlius’ makeshift army, pleading above all (according to Sallust)
for relief from debt-bondage. Marcius Rex told them to lay down their
arms, go to Rome to make their petition, and trust the traditional
compassion and clemency of the Senate. But they had good reasons for
no longer trusting that tradition.'35

In Rome, Catiline and his friends, who included the praetor Lentulus
Sura, had had to reconsider their strategy since the elections. Just as
Autronius and Vargunteius had never resigned themselves to the verdict
of the bribery court, so now Catiline would not acquiesce in the verdict
of the voters. Lentulus still cherished his dream of being the third

132, Suet. Aug. 5.1, 94.5 (C. Octavius was late for the meeting of the Senate on 23 September; his
wife had just given birth to the future emperor Augustus).

133 Pluc. Cie. 15, Crass. 13.3 (from Cicero); Cic. Cat. 1.7. For the dates, see Hardy 1924 (c 211)
54—8. 1@ Sall. Cat. 30. Cisalpine Gaul: Cic. Fam. v.2.3, with Badian 1966 (c 163) 914-16.

135 Sall. Cat. 33.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PEASANTS REVOLT 355

Cornelius to hold supreme power, and there were other malcontents and
spendthrifts who hoped that a revolution might bring them out on
top.!3¢ Cicero’s informers reported secret meetings and the plotting of
assassination and civil war. The massacre referred to in the mysterious
letters had not happened, but on the morning of 7 November Vargun-
teius and an eques called Cornelius were turned away from Cicero’s door
because his information had named them as assassins.

The next day Cicero summoned the Senate to the temple of Jupiter
Stator, which was easily defensible and close to his house. Even so, he
was escorted by armed eguites who picketed the temple while the meeting
was going on.'37 The consul taunted Catiline with the discovery of his
plans, but of course could not identify his informants (notably the dicer
and spendthrift Q. Curius and his mistress). Catiline sat in sullen silence,
then demanded that Cicero take a vote: if the Senate wished him to go
into exile, he would go. Though the consul had been accused of
exaggerating the danger to his own greater glory, the Senate gave no
sign of support for Catiline. But such a vote would have been unprece-
dented, and Cicero could not press for it.

But that night Catiline left Rome. He was already facing prosecution
in the quaestio de vi, and bankruptcy on 13 November when his creditors
had to be paid, so it was entirely natural for an honourable man to go into
voluntary exile — to Massilia, he said. He left a letter with Catulus, full of
patrician resentment at the destruction of his career. ‘I took up the cause
of the oppressed because I was provoked by wrongs and insults, robbed
of the reward of my work and effort, and unable to maintain a position of
dignity.” Unworthy men were given the honour of high office, while he
was ostracized because of a false suspicion. But if it ever had been a false
suspicion, Catiline now made it true; he was travelling north up the Via
Aurelia not to take ship for Massilia, but to put himself in command of
Manlius’ peasant army.'38 As soon as his arrival was reported, the Senate
declared war on both him and Manlius, and put the consul Antonius in
charge of the forces of the Republic to defeat them.'39

In Rome at the time were two ambassadors from the Allobrogian
Gauls, who had done what Marcius Rex advised Manlius’ men to do —
they had appealed to the traditional compassion and clemency of the
Senate against ruinous usury and avaricious magistrates. Desperate at
the Senate’s refusal to help, they must have been sourly glad to see their
recent proconsul, L. Murena, on trial for electoral bribery. Cato had
brought the case ‘in the interests of the Republic’; Cicero successfully

136 Names (and motives) in Sall. Cat. 17, emphasizing discontented nobiles. See Gruen 1974 (Cc
209) 418—22.

137 Cic. Cat. 1.1, 21; Cicero’s house was on the Carinae (Plut. Cie. 8.3; Cic. OFr. 11.3.7). See
Coarelli 1985 (B 277) 26-31 (Iuppiter Stator), 39f (Carinae).

138 Sall. Car. 35, cf. 31.4 (prosecution), Cic. Cat. 1.14 (creditors). 139 Sall. Cat. 36.26.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

356 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

defended Murena on the same grounds, insisting that Rome would need
two consuls firmly in power in the new year to guard against continuing
plots, not new elections with their potentiality for disorder. ‘The Trojan
horse is within, yes, within the walls!’ The Allobroges now justified his
portentous words, reporting that they had been approached to join a
secret group led by the praetor Lentulus Sura. With the co-operation of
the Gauls, Cicero captured letters ~ from Lentulus himself, a senator C.
Cethegus and an eques L. Statilius — urging the Allobroges to rise in
rebellion, and arrested a messenger, T. Volturcius of Croton, who
carried a cryptic note from Lentulus to Catiline.!40

At dawn on 3 December Cicero sent for the authors of the three
letters, and for P. Gabinius, who had been one of the Allobroges’
contacts; he despatched one of the praetors to seize a cache of weapons at
Cethegus’ house; and he summoned the Senate to the temple of Concord.
Volturcius gave evidence, adding some more names (including Autro-
nius and Vargunteius) and alleging that his verbal instructions from
Lentulus had been to urge Catiline to recruit slaves and march on Rome,
where the conspirators would create panic by arson and murder. The
Allobroges gave evidence too, and incriminated L. Cassius, one of the
praetors of the previous year. They confirmed the plan to fire the city,
which they said had been fixed for 17 December, the Saturnalia. The
letters were produced; Lentulus, Cethegus and Statilius acknowledged
their seals; the tablets were opened and read, including the one
Volturcius had been carrying from Lentulus to Catiline. All three men
eventually confessed, as did Gabinius when he was brought in. The
Senate voted that Lentulus should resign his praetorship; that he,
Cethegus, Statilius and Gabinius should be held in custody; that Cassius,
who had left Rome, should be arrested; and that four other men should
be sought and detained — M. Caeparius of Tarracina, who was on his way
to Apulia to stir up a slave revolt, P. Furius, a colonist from Faesulae, Q.
Annius Chilo, a junior senator, and P. Umbrenus, the freedman who had
first approached the Allobroges.'4!

Cicero’s recent outspoken opposition to those who claimed to be the
people’s friends had earned him some unpopularity, orchestrated by two
of the tribunes-elect.!42 But evidence of plans to burn the city, free slaves,
and bring down savage Gauls on Italy changed the attitude of the urban
plebs. When the Senate decreed a thanksgiving to the gods ‘because the
consul had delivered the city from fire, the citizens from slaughter, and
Italy from war’, on the very day that the new statue of Jupiter was being

40 Cic. Mur. 78-8; (cf. n. 103 above), Cas. 11.4-6, Sall. Cat. 40-6.

141 Cic. Cat, 111.6-14, Sall. Cat. 46-7.

142 Cic. Mur. 83 (seditio and discordia), Cat. 111.3 (invidia), tv.9 (‘levitas contionatorum’); Fam. v.2.6
(Q. Metellus Nepos), Sall. Caf. 43.1 (L. Calpurnius Bestia).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT 357

erected on the Capitol to watch over Rome, Cicero had the Forum crowd
eating out of his hand. For a moment, the whole citizen body, plebs and
patres, was at one behind its consul.!43 That unanimity lasted just two
days.

In an increasingly hysterical atmosphere, with attempts being made to
incriminate leading politicians, notably Crassus and Caesar, and to
rescue Lentulus and Cethegus from custody,!* Cicero called on the
Senate on 5 December — the ‘Nones of December’ — to consider the fate
of the prisoners. Cicero knew what was at stake, but said he would prefer
an immediate death penalty; it was for the Senate to decide. This was a
position consistent with his words at the trial of Rabirius. After a tense
debate, and despite a reasoned and courageous speech by Caesar as
praetor-elect, proposing strict confinement as a punishment, the Senate
was carried away by the force of Cato’s denunciation of criminals taken
in the act, and decided that the prisoners had forfeited their rights as
Roman citizens; they should be put to death.!45 Cicero gave the orders
immediately, and the five men (for Caeparius had been arrested and
brought back) were summoned under guard to the Tullianum.

Cicero himself, with an escort of armed senior senators, brought
Lentulus from his cousin’s house on the Palatine, down the Via Sacra
and through the crowded Forum. A patrician ex-consul from one of the
greatest families in Rome, with a dignity of bearing that belied his vices,
was being taken to his death. In Plutarch’s words, ‘the people shuddered
in silence and did not interfere. For the young men especially, it was as if
they were being initiated, with terror and amazement, into the ancient
mysteries of some aristocratic regime.” Summary execution, without
trial, for the intention to carry out what the Senate declared was treason;
so some populares saw it. They no doubt remembered Sp. Maelius, the
demagogue who had been killed by a senator four hundred years before
on the suspicion of aiming at tyranny.!*

The executions polarized political opinion. Cicero’s supporters hailed
him as the new founder of Rome, father of his country, worthy of the
civic crown for saving the lives of citizens.!47 His opponents called hima
tyrant, with the blood of Roman citizens on his hands.'48 On the last day
of the year the new tribunes Q. Metellus Nepos and L. Bestia placed their
bench in front of the rostra and forbade Cicero to address the people.

143 Cic. Cat. mu, esp. rf and 25 (fire), 1 (thanksgiving), 18-23 (gods); 1v.14—7 (consensio).

14 Sail. Cat. 48 (Crassus), 49 (Caesar), 50.1f; Cic. Cat. v.17.

145 The precise reconstruction of the debate is uncertain: Gelzer 1969 (c 198) sof.

146 Plut. Cic. 22.1; Sall. Cat. 47.4 (house of P. Lentulus Spinther), Cic. Brut. 235 (Lentulus’ formae
dignitasy, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. xit.2 for a popularis version (Macer?) of the death of Sp. Maelius.

“47 Cic. Pés. 6 (Q. Catulus, L. Gellius), Plut. Cie. 22.3, 23.3 (Cato).

48 Plut. Cic. 23.2 (Suvacreia), Cic. Sul. 21f (regnum), 30f (indices approve, Forum crowd
indignant).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

358 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

One who had put others to death without a hearing had no right to be
heard himself. He must take his required oath, that he had obeyed the
laws, and say no more. To the cheers of his well-wishers, Cicero swore in
ringing tones that the city and the Republic had been saved by him
alone.149

The city, yes. But the Republic was still at war. With the lictors and
fasces of an assumed imperium, Catiline was in command of two rebel
legions — ill-armed, depleted by desertions after the news from Rome,
but a disciplined and desperate force. Their standard was a silver eagle
that Marius’ army had carried against the Cimbri; their base was the
Marian heartland of north Etruria.!50 The urban plot had been put down,
but the peasants’ revolt had not yet been defeated. (For the Allobroges,
too, there was nothing left but rebellion.)

V. RETURN OF THE HERO

During the year 63 (perhaps to spoil Lucullus’ triumph), two of the
tribunes had got unheard-of honours voted to Pompey. He was
permitted to wear a golden crown at all public games, with a /foga
praetexta in the theatre and the embroidered triumphal toga in the
Circus. The corona aurea and toga picta were symbols of kingship, assumed
by Tarquinius Priscus and his successors and denied to the great men of
the Republic except on the one occasion of the triumph; for Pompey, the
glory of the triumphator was to be renewed on every public holiday.
(Cicero, anxious that the Senate too should be seen to honour Pompey,
got it to vote him a lengthy thanksgiving.)!5!

Now, on the first day of 62 B.c., Caesar as praetor proposed a law
transferring the reconstruction of the temple of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus to Pompey. Catulus, he said, had been embezzling the public
funds. The senior senators hurried down from the Capitol to the Forum
in time to prevent the vote; but Caesar and the two tribunes had
succeeded in re-creating the political atmosphere of ten years earlier,
when it seemed that only the return of Pompey could vindicate the
people against the avarice and cruelty of the dominant pafres. Metellus
Nepos, who had left Pompey’s victorious army in order to hold the
tribunate, kept up the pressure, denouncing the Senate, and Cicero in
particular, for the unlawful execution of Lentulus and the others, and
proposing to have Pompey elected consul én absentia. When the Senate
overbore him, announcing immunity for those involved in the execu-

“9 Cic. Fam. v.2.7f (‘qua iniuria nemo umquam in ullo magistratu improbissimus civis adfectus
est’), Pis. 6. 150 Cic. Caf. 11.13, Sall. Cas. 36.1, 59.3 (fasces, eagle).

151 Vell. Pat. 1.40.1 (T. Labienus, T. Ampius), Dio xxxvu1.21.4 (Caesar in favour, Cato opposed);
Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 111.61-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

RETURN OF THE HERO 359

tions (any prosecutor would be declared a public enemy), in the eyes of
many citizens that no doubt merely confirmed the justice of his
complaint.152

But Cato was also a tribune, the man whose hardline speech, in spite of
his junior position, had won the day on the Nones. He now persuaded
the Senate to relieve the poor and landless — not by radical debt- and
property-reform but by extending the distribution of subsidized grain.
His scheme more than doubled the treasury’s financial commitment, but
this time there were no cries of senatorial outrage.!53 Action on the
economic front would alleviate the Senate’s unpopularity, and weaken
the appeal of Catiline’s rebellion.

That rebellion was still the main issue of the day. Praetors had been
sent to prevent sympathetic risings elsewhere in Italy,'54 but the main
army was undefeated. What good were discredited men like Antonius
and Marcius Rex against Catiline? Metellus Nepos proposed a bill for a
special command: Pompey should return, with his army in being, to
protect Rome. Cato delivered a fierce tirade in the Senate and swore that
Pompey would never enter the city with soldiers while he was alive.

On the morning of the vote, Cato, with one fellow-tribune, Q.
Minicius Thermus, pushed his way on to the platform and sat down on
the tribunes’ bench between Nepos and Caesar’s curule chair. Amid the
shouts and cheers, Nepos motioned to the clerk to read the bill. Cato
ordered him to keep silent. Nepos stood up, took the document himself
and began to read it. Cato snatched it from him. Nepos began to recite
the bill from memory. Thermus stepped behind him and put his hand
over his mouth. By now there was uproar. Cato was the target for volleys
of stones, until he allowed himself to be led into the safety of a temple by
the consul Murena. Nepos dismissed his armed supporters as soon as
they had cleared the pro-Cato party out of the Forum, and prepared to
have the bill voted on as if nothing had happened. But his opponents
regrouped and came back with weapons. It was the turn of Nepos’
supporters to scatter, and Cato emerged from the temple to reiterate his
veto.

The Senate met that afternoon and passed the emergency decree. It
was strongly urged that Nepos be stripped of his tribunate. But that
would make him a martyr to senatorial tyranny, and Cato persuaded the
patres to take no further action against him. In fact Nepos played into the
Senate’s hands. He called a public meeting, gave a furious harangue
against the despotic behaviour of Cato and the Senate — they were all ina

182 Dio xxxvi1.g2.2f (Nepos), 44.1f (Caesar); Suet. Iu/. 15, Sebol. Bob. 134St; Cic. Fam. v.2.8-9
(clashes between Nepos and Cicero on 1 and 3 January); Plut. Cat. Min. 20.2 (Nepos as Pompey’s
agent). 53 Plut. Cat. Min. 26.1, Caes. 8.4; Rickman 1979 (G 212) 168-71.

14 Dio xxxvur.gt.1, Oros. v1.6.7 (Q. Cicero to Bruttium, M. Bibulus to the Paeligni).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

360 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

conspiracy against Pompey, but they would rue the day they had insulted
so great a man! — and flung off headlong down the Via Appia to report.155
(Pompey was at Rhodes, holding court among rhetoricians and philoso-
phers; Nepos had to explain how, with much popular support, a
favourable political climate, and the help of a troop of gladiators, he had
succeeded only in making himself a laughing stock and Cato a hero. It
must have given Pompey food for deep thought on who his friends
should be.)

Caesar was a much better tactician. Suspended from his praetorship by
the Senate for his part in the riot, he continued his judicial duties until it
was clear that he would be prevented by force, then withdrew to his
house. When a crowd gathered, noisily promising support, he calmed it
down, and had the satisfaction of receiving a grateful delegation of
senior senators who escorted him to the senate-house and reinstated him
in office. His enemies now attacked him through the quaestio de vi, where
Autronius, Vargunteius and other friends of Catiline had recently been
condemned. A certain L. Vettius offered evidence that Caesar had been
in treasonable correspondence with Catiline. Having got Cicero to attest
that Caesar had given him valuable information against the conspirators,
the praetor used his coercitio on the informer. Vettius’ goods were seized,
he was beaten and thrown into prison.15¢

In Etruria, meanwhile, Catiline had turned his rebel army northwards,
hoping to escape across the Apennines. But Metellus Celer forestalled
him. At Pistoria, therefore, Catiline turned again, to fight it out.
Antonius left the battle to his legate M. Petreius, an experienced soldier.
It was a bloody affair, for Catiline’s troops were stiffened by elderly
veterans. He and Manlius were killed with all their forces; they were
desperate men who did not wish to survive their defeat.!57

The end of Catiline, and of the threat (or hope) that he represented,
calmed the political hysteria at Rome. And now official despatches came
from Pompey, announcing the successful completion of all military and
naval operations. He would soon be home, peace and prosperity were
assured. !58 The consular elections were postponed to allow his legate M.
Pupius Piso to compete; he was elected by a huge majority.!5°

But if the populace was confident, the patres were not. Pompey’s
whole career had consisted of special arrangements, exemptions, unpre-
cedented powers, unexpected alliances. How was he going to fit back

$35 Plut. Cat. Min. 26.2-29.2, Cic. Sest. 62, Dio xxxvut.43, Suet. Iu/. 16; Cic. Fam. v.2.9 (with
Shackleton Bailey ad /oc.), contra contionem O. Metelli fr. ie.

156 Suet. Iu/. 16-7; Cic. Sull. 6f, 71, Cael. 70 on the quaestio de vi.

157 Salt. Cat. 57-61, Dio xxxvit. 39-40.

158 Cic. Fa. v.7.1 (‘tantam enim spem oti ostendisti’), Prov. Cons. 27.

159 Dio xxxvit.44.3; Plut. Pomp. 44.1 (Cato objects to further postponement for Pompey himself
to be present).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

RETURN OF THE HERO 361

into Roman politics now that his glory was greater than ever? What line
would he take on the newly polarized issue of senatorial authority versus
popular liberty? Pompey, after all, had sent Metellus Nepos to be
tribune; and he had replied very coolly to the enthusiastic account Cicero
had sent of the events of 63. Cicero now wrote back:

What I have done for the safety of the whole country stands approved in the
judgement and testimony of the whole world. When you return, you will find
that I have acted with a measure of policy and lack of self-regard which will
make you content to have me as your political ally and private friend — a not
much lesser Laelius to a far greater Africanus.

That proposal was made more in hope than in confidence.!6° But when,
late in the year, Pompey finally landed at Brundisium, two things
encouraged Cicero and the senatorial establishment to take heart. First,
Pompey immediately demobilized his forces; and second, he divorced
his wife, Metellus Nepos’ half-sister Mucia.16!

Pompey could not enter the city before his triumph, but he could
install himself in his Alban villa and take part in whatever meetings of
Senate or people might be called outside the pomoerium. He arrived in the
vicinity of Rome in time for the entry into office in January 61 of his
protégé M. Piso, whose job as consul would be to get the Senate to ratify
Pompey’s arrangements for the newly conquered lands of the East. That
would not be easy, as they had been made without the assistance of the
usual senatorial Commission of Ten, and without regard to Lucullus’
intentions and decisions. But in any case Pompey found Piso otherwise
occupied, at odds with his colleague (the patrician M. Messalla) over an
apparently trivial matter that now threatened to divert attention from
the great man’s glorious return.

One of the new quaestors had been pursuing the wife of one of the
outgoing praetors. The alleged adulterer was P. Clodius;!® the lady was
Pompeia, the wife of Caesar, at whose house the nocturnal rites of the
Good Goddess, which no male was permitted to witness, were being
held early in December when Clodius was discovered on the premises
dressed as a woman. The matter was raised in the Senate, and referred to
the pontifices and the Vestals for a ruling as to whether or not sacrilege had
been committed. The college of pontifices, now chaired by Caesar himself
(who immediately divorced his wife without admitting her guilt, so
being able to retain his friendship with Clodius), included Catulus, M.
Lucullus and Metellus Creticus, none of whom was likely to be
sympathetic to the saboteur of Lucullus’ Armenian campaign. The new

1 Cic. Fam. v.7.3 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110)); for Cicero’s original letter ‘de meis
rebus gestis et de summa re publica’, see Cic. Swill. 67, Plane. 85 (with Schol. Bob. 167St).

161 Cic. Att. 1.12.3 (‘divortium Muciae vehementer probatur’); Plut. Pomp. 43, Dio xxxvut.20.6,
Vell. Pat. 11.40. 2f. 162 For his earlier career, see above, notes 76, 93, 103, 131.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

362 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

consuls were in office when the priests reported that it was indeed
sacrilege. Messalla, himself a pontifex, took a strong moral line; M. Piso
was a friend of Clodius and tried to protect him.16

The Senate agreed with Messalla, and instructed the consuls to present
a bill to the people setting up an ad hoc court to try Clodius for incestum,
the jury to be selected by the praetor who would preside over the court.
The familiar issue of senatorial authority was now involved, especially as
Clodius and his raffish friends looked dangerously like the young
dandies who had supported Catiline two years before. Not only that, but
Clodius’ enemies had been Pompey’s enemies too (Catulus, Lucullus,
Hortensius), and Clodius’ friend the consul had been Pompey’s
nominee.!64

Into this situation now walked Pompey himself. His first public
speech had been eagerly awaited, but fell flat; studiously non-partisan, it
had pleased nobody. Now, early in February, a tribune called a meeting
in the Circus Flaminius (just outside the city gate) and asked Pompey
what he thought of the Senate’s proposal for a hand-picked jury. Piso
had put him up to it, but cannot have liked the result. Pompey held forth
like an elder statesman on the authority of the Senate; he considered it
paramount on all subjects, and always had done. Encouraged by this,
Messalla asked in the Senate a few hours later for the opinion of Pompey
concerning the sacrilege and the bill the Senate had proposed. The same
thing happened: Pompey went out of his way to approve a// decrees of
the Senate, including that one. ‘And now’, he remarked to his neighbour
Cicero as he sat down, ‘I think I’ve said enough about all that.’165

It was certainly enough for Cicero — approval not only of the hand-
picked jury, but by implication also of the Senate’s decision to execute
the plotters. Pompey had shown his hand at last. (In fact he even tried to
marry a niece of Cato’s, but Cato declined the proposal; Cicero,
convinced of the need to keep Pompey allied to the Senate, must have
groaned.)

When the bill for setting up Clodius’ trial came before the people, Piso
and Clodius frustrated it by blatant ballot-rigging, which caused the
assembly to be dismissed in disorder. The Senate instructed the consuls
to urge the people to accept the bill; the majority was overwhelming
(over 400 to about 15, Cicero says) but the tribune Q. Fufius vetoed the
decree. Clodius’ tactic was to present himself as a friend of the people
victimized by the old senatorial clique. He was a patrician, but
announced his desire to ‘cross over’ to the plebs and join the great

163 Pontifices: Macrob. Sat. 11.13.11 (Catulus), Cic. Har. Resp. 12. Piso and Clodius: Cic. Aft.
1.13.3.

164 Cic. Aft. 1.14.5 (‘ille grex Catilinae’), 16.11 (‘comissatores coniurationis’), for example; 16.2
(Hortensius’ odium). 165 Cic. Alt. 1.14.1-4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

RETURN OF THE HERO 363

tradition of popular tribunes in Opposition to senatorial domination.'66
Meanwhile, one of the present tribunes — Fufius, no doubt — was
preparing a bill on the consular provinces, to give wealthy Syria (one of
Pompey’s recently conquered kingdoms) to the consul M. Piso, with
Clodius as his quaestor.'67

Fufius persisted in his veto until the Senate, at Hortensius’ suggestion,
backed down on the question of the hand-picked jury. He then put
through a tribunician bill for the court to be set up, with the jury chosen
by lot in the normal way, and in the spring the trial duly took place.
Despite Cicero’s misgivings about them, the jury seemed to be taking a
severe view. Cicero himself braved the threats of Clodius’ supporters to
give evidence that the accused had been in Rome on the day in question;
the eques Causinius Schola, who claimed for the defence that Clodius had
been at his house at Interamna Lirenas, nearly 90 miles down the Via
Latina, was therefore lying. The jury asked the Senate for a bodyguard.
A ‘guilty’ verdict seemed inevitable.

Clodius had only two advantages — available money (no doubt the
usurers knew that Syria was a rich province) and disreputable friends of
both sexes. During the two nights of the trial period, we are told, one
juror after another came to the house of a certain ‘Calvus’ (no doubt
Licinius Calvus, Macer’s son); some, it was said, received cash, some had
their debts transferred to Clodius’ creditors, some were won over by the
promise of sexual favours. Clodius was acquitted by thirty-one votes to
twenty-five. ‘Is that why you wanted a guard’, said Catulus bitterly; ‘so
your money shouldn’t be stolen?’ (It is the last we hear of the great
man.)!68

The Senate’s authority had taken another knock. But the main loser
was Cicero himself, who had committed himself against a dangerous
enemy. His own position was very ambiguous. He had just spent
3,§ 00,000 sesterces On a superb town house on the Palatine, once owned
by Crassus; the money had been borrowed from P. Sulla, whom he had
defended in 62 on a charge of being involved with Catiline, and from C.
Antonius, now in Macedonia, who was paying, through a discreet lady
go-between, for Cicero’s help in preventing his supersession and
Cicero’s promised defence in the extortion trial that he would surely
have to face.!69 That could be made to look like corruption; and the great
house made it easy for any competent demagogue (and Clodius was

16 Cato’s niece: Plut. Cat. Min. 30.2—4. Cic. Aft. 1.14.5, 1.1.5, in Clod. et Cur. fr. 14p (‘cum se ad
plebem transire velle diceret’).

167 Inferred from Cic. Att. 1.16.8 (with Balsqon 1962 (c 168) 140) and én Clod. et Cur. fr. 8P.

168 Cic. Aft. 1.16.1-5 (reading ‘Calvum ex veaviats’); Wiseman 1968 (c 284). ‘Calvus’, ‘baldhead’,
is more traditionally supposed to be Crassus.

1 Sulla: Gell. NA xu1.12.2f, ps.-Sall. inv. in Cie. 2. Antonius and ‘Teucris’: Cic. Aff. 1.12.1 (with
Shackleton Bailey ad /oc.), Fam. v.5.2f, 6.26.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

364 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

certainly that) to class Cicero with Lucullus and Hortensius in the eyes of
the Forum crowd. The executions still rankled — ‘how long shall we
endure this king?’ — and for over a year it had been normal for Cicero to
be whistled and jeered at by part of the Roman populace.!70

But this year was different. The presence of Pompey, and his imminent
triumph, mattered more to the Roman people than old resentments
stirred up by Clodius. They saw Cicero as a friend of Pompey, and
cheered him at the games. Perhaps they remembered the speech for
Manilius’ law. The people did not care much when Cicero attacked
Clodius and M. Piso in the Senate, and got the allocation of Syria
revoked. (Clodius had to get his province by sortition in the usual way,
and the lot gave him Sicily.)!7!

Pompey still needed a friendly consul to get the ratification of his
eastern settlement through the Senate against the opposition of Lucul-
lus, Crassus and Cato.!72 He also still needed his veterans settled. M. Piso
had let him down this year; one of next year’s consuls was sure to be Q.
Metellus Celer, half-brother of the wife Pompey had just pointedly
divorced. L. Afranius, one of Pompey’s old legates, was a reliable man,
but a novus homo with no obvious credentials. Pompey set about
sweetening the voters on Afranius’ behalf; the Senate became indignant
about bribery, and gave a tribune special dispensation to propose a /ex de
ambitu during the immediate pre-election period.!73 However, Afranius
was elected with Celer for the year 60. Censors were elected too. Perhaps
the return and triumph of Pompey would again, as ten years earlier,
bring about a /ustrum to cleanse the citizen body of its accumulated
guilt.!74

The triumph took place over two days at the end of September. It was,
and it was meant to be, the greatest show Rome had ever seen.

Cn. Pompeius Magnus, ‘mperator, having completed a thirty-year war, routed,
scattered, slain or received the surrender of 12,183,000 people, sunk or taken
846 ships, received the capitulation of 1,538 towns and forts, subdued the lands
from the Crimea to the Red Sea... having rescued the sea-coast from pirates and
restored to the Roman people the command of the sea, celebrated a triumph
over Asia, Pontus, Armenia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Syria, the
Scythians, the Jews, the Albanians, Iberia, the island of Crete, the Bastarnde, and
in addition to these, over kings Mithridates and Tigranes.

As the placards in the procession boasted, every one of Pompey’s
soldiers had been given at least 6,000 sesterces; 20,000 talents in gold and

170 Cic, Att, 1.16.10 (‘quousque hunc regem feremus?’), 16.11 (‘pastoricia fistula’).

17t Cic. Aft. 1.16.8—11 (‘missus est sanguis invidiae’); in Clod. et Cur. fr. 12p for the lot.

12 Plut. Luc. 42.5; for Crassus’ continuing jealousy of Pompey, cf. Cic. Aft. 1.14.3.

173 Cic. Aft. 1 16.12f, with Badian’s interpretation of the received text: 1984 (B 3). Celer and
Mucia: Cic. Fam. v.2.4, Dio xxxvit.49.3. Afranius: Plut. Mor. 8068.

174 Dio xxxvit.46.4: probably C. Curio cos. 76 (Cic. Of. 11.58); and L. Caesar cos. 64 (Nicolet 1980
(B 212) 112-235).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

RETURN OF THE HERO 365

silver had been paid into the treasury; and the public revenues of the
Roman people had been raised by Pompey’s conquests from 50 million
to 135 million denarii per annum.!75 Who could ever equal such an
achievement? In the competitive world of Roman political ambition,
that was more than just a rhetorical question. Pompey’s golden crown
was the symbol of a dangerous inflation in the price of glory.

By the time Afranius and Metellus Celer entered office, the main
political issue was a quarrel between the Senate and the equestrian order.
A proposed law on judicial corruption had failed to exempt equestrian
jurors; and a society of publicani, finding they had bid too high at the
censor’s auction for the Asian tax contract (perhaps that of 652), now
wanted it renegotiated. Cicero knew the equites had a bad case on both
issues, but supported them for the sake of the harmony he advocated
between the two orders. The /ex de indiciis was dropped, but the request
of the publicani, strongly supported by Crassus and equally strongly
opposed by Cato, dragged on, paralysing the Senate’s business.176

The tribunes of the new year (Go B.c.) included one who proposed a
billto transfer P. Clodius to the plebs, and several who vetoed it.!177 More
immediately significant was a major land bill, proposed by the tribune L.
Flavius with Pompey’s backing, the first attempt to tackle that perennial
problem since the Rullan bill three years before. As then, the beneficiar-
ies would be both poor citizens in general and Pompey’s veterans in
particular; and as then, the Senate was suspicious of the authority that
would be required to administer it, fearing another of Pompey’s special
commands. Cicero tried to make it appear harmless to the interests of the
rich, but Metellus the consul was so outspoken in his opposition that the
people’s tribune had him put in prison. Defiant, Metellus called the
Senate to meet him there; finally Pompey had to persuade Flavius to let
him go. Flavius next threatened to prevent Metellus from going to his
province; Metellus called his bluff, and eventually the whole agrarian
proposal came to nothing.'78

The question of Metellus’ province was an urgent one. There was a
serious military emergency in Gaul, where C. Pomptinus had just put
down the revolt of the over-exploited Allobroges. Now came news that
the Helvetii had defeated Rome’s allies, the Aedui, and were attacking
the Roman province. The Senate cancelled the allotted consular pro-
vinces; the two consuls were to go to Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul.179

Meanwhile, the arrangements for the provinces to be held by the
following year’s consuls were causing unusual concern. Caesar was on

5 Pliny HN vit.g7f (trans. H. Rackham, slightly adapted); Plut. Pomp. 45.2f (adding Media,
Colchis, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Arabia).

"6 Cic. Att.1.17.9, 18-3, 18.7, 1.1.8; Badian 1972 (Aa 2) 101-4, 111f (suggesting Crassus had shares
in the companies concerned). "7 Cic. Att. 1.18.4, 19.5 (C. Herennius).

1% Cic. Alt. 1.18.6, 19.4, 11.1.6 and 8; Dio xxxvil.50.1-4. 179 Cic. Aff. 1.19.2, 20.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

366 9. THE SENATE AND THE POPULARES

his way back from Spain, where he had fought a successful campaign in
the far west, and been voted a triumph for it. He was due in Rome in
June, in time to stand at the consular elections. But when the Senate, led
by Cato, refused to grant him permission to declare his candidacy
without crossing the pomoerium and losing his imperium (necessary for a
triumph) prematurely, he gave up the triumph to fight the election.
Caesar was very popular (‘the wind’s in his sails just now’, said Cicero),
and it was certain that he would be elected. To minimize the damage,
therefore, it was proposed in the Senate that the following year’s consuls
should not go to provinces abroad, but undertake the very necessary job
of policing the brigand-infested forests and drove-roads of Italy.'8°

It was probably at this point that Caesar approached first Pompey and
then Pompey’s old rival Crassus. What all three had in common was an
urgent need to overcome the opposition of the senatorial establishment,
which, though it now lacked Catulus’ clearsightedness, was formidably
strengthened by the unbending moral authority of Cato. ‘As for our
friend Cato’, wrote Cicero, who deplored the Senate’s dogged oppo-
sition to Pompey, ina letter to Atticus, ‘I have as warm a regard for him
as you. The fact remains that with all his patriotism and integrity he is
sometimes a political liability. He speaks in the Senate as though he were
living in Plato’s Republic instead of Romulus’ cesspool.’ But Cato
turned a blind eye now as the bribes were distributed to ensure that his
son-in-law M. Calpurnius Bibulus was elected as Caesar’s colleague. 8!

Pompey, yet again, needed a reliable consul. Afranius, it was now
clear, was not up to the job;!82 still the ratification of his settlement was
being blocked, and still his soldiers had no land. He was, at this time, on
close terms with Cicero; clearly he was looking for acceptance and
respectability in the eyes of the senatorial establishment. But Cicero
could not give him that; he himself was kept at a distance by the ‘fish-
pond-fanciers’ and despaired of the future of the Republic with such men
at its head: ‘Since Catulus died I have been holding to this optimate road
without supporters or companions. As Rhinthon (I think) has it, “Some
count for nothing, others nothing care.” I shall write to you some other
time about the jealousy towards me of our fish-pond-fancying friends
. . 2183 Pompey and Cicero were in the same predicament, excluded from
political authority by a clique of nobles. Indeed, it was largely the same
clique (now strengthened by Cato) that both of them had attacked ten
years before as domineering and corrupt.

19 Suet. Iv/. 18, Plut. Caes. 13.1; Suet. Iu/. 19.2 (‘opera ab optimatibus data’); quotation from Cic.
Arr. 11.1.6. Balsdon 1962 (€ 168) thought the provinces were given provisionally, till the situation in
Gaul should become clear; but there is no parallel for such a holding operation.

181 Suet. Iu/. 19.1; Cic. Aft. 11.1.8 (trans. Shackleton Bailey).

18 Cic. Aft. 1.18.5 (‘quam ignavus et sine animo miles!’), 19.4, 20.5.
1B Cic. Aft. 1.18.6, 20.3 (trans. Shackleton Bailey). For the pistinarii, see nn. 24, 38 above.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

RETURN OF THE HERO 367

There should have been a /ustrum in 60, but the censors failed to
achieve it as their predecessors had failed in 65 and 64. Cicero might well
be depressed about the prospects for the Republic. He published a
collection of his consular speeches in an attempt to remind people of his
great deeds, and of a period, as he saw it, of concord and unity.!85
Pompey, on the other hand, allied himself with.Caesar and Crassus.
Cicero knew what that meant, and declined to join the alliance when
invited in December 60. He preferred to fight for the Republic — as the
doomed Hector for Troy.!86

What had happened to the high hopes of the /ustrum of 69, to the
programme of reform through the tribunate? First, the so-called popu-
Jares failed to keep the ideological initiative; the nadir of the popular
cause was the moment in 61 when the idea of popular liberty was
invoked to frustrate a prosecution so that a patrician playboy might be
free to plunder a wealthy province.!8’ Secondly, the Sullan oligarchy was
tenacious of its power, taking full advantage of Pompey’s absence and
successfully living down part of its image of avarice and corruption;
thanks to Cato, it could almost now be associated with old-fashioned
civic virtue. Thirdly, and most fundamentally, the very structure of the
Republic itself was strained beyond its capacity for survival. The census
of 70-69 doubled the size of the citizen body; the conquests of Pompey
doubled the size of Rome’s empire. With three new kingdoms to rule as
provinces, and the unprecedented glory of Pompey’s achievement as a
goal for emulous ambition, the prizes of success in the political
competition could not be allowed to depend on the free vote of an
electorate too big to control by legitimate means. The constant bribery
scandals of the sixties show all too clearly that the Republican constitu-
tion was fast becoming unworkable.

184 Cic, Aft, 1.18.8, 11.11. 185 Cic. Att. 11.1.3; for his depression, cf. 1.16.6, 17.8, 18.1f, 18.8.
186 Cic, Ast. 11.3.4, quoting [iad x11.243. 187 See n. 167 above.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 10

CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME, 59-50 B.C.

T. P. WISEMAN

I. CAESAR AND CLODIUS

It was clear from the moment of their election that the two consuls of 59
B.c. would be at loggerheads. The immediate issue, already foreseen in
December, was a land law; Caesar was aiming to do as consul what the
tribunes had failed to do in 63 and Go. Bibulus, on the other hand, was
determined to resist it on behalf of Cato and the senatorial establishment.
The familiar ideology of plebs and pares — explicit in Cicero’s statement
of his position on this occasion! — was now to be played out not as a
conflict of tribunes and consuls but as a trial of strength between the
consuls themselves.

Caesar’s attitude to the populace was made clear as soon as he entered
office. From now on the Senate’s debates (and the proceedings of the
people) were to be officially recorded and published, its business made
accessible to the general citizen body. Helped, no doubt, by this
publicity, Caesar went out of his way to be conciliatory to his opponents
in the Senate. He chose Crassus, not Pompey, as the first consularis to be
asked his opinion (not that the optimates would like that much better); he
announced that in the alternate months when his colleague held the
fasces his own official escort would be merely an orderly (his lictors to
follow behind); and he assured the patres that he would bring in no
legislation that was against their interests.?

In particular, they would find that the proposed land law did not
contain any of the features they had found so objectionable in Rullus’ bill
four years earlier.> To prove it, he went through the text clause by clause,
inviting criticism and offering to delete anything the Senate did not like.
The Campanian land was not to be touched; the scheme would bring

Because of the richness of the material for this period, many source references are exempli gratia.

1 Cic. Aft. 11.3.4 (Dec. 60): acquiescence in the land law would bring ‘pax cum multitudine’, but
Cicero’s own policy guides him dptotoxpatexds (see Plut. Cit. 22.1, p. 357 above).

2 Suet. Iu/. 20.1, and on acta senatus Aug. 5, 36.1; Dio xxxviit.1.1; Suet. Ju/. 21 (Crassus), 20.1
(accensus and lictors).

3 See Crawford 1989 (c 187) who argues that the bill ‘defined the status of almost all, if not all, the
land in Italy’.

368

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CAESAR AND CLODIUS 369

desolate areas of Italy back into cultivation, and put Roman citizens back
on the land instead of encouraging them to riot in the city; the
commission administering the distribution was to number twenty men,
of whom Caesar as the proposer could not be one; it was to buy property
only from willing sellers, and only at the value fixed in the censors’
registration; and the money was available, thanks to Pompey’s conquests
and the heroism of his soldiers, who deserved the right to share in what
their labours had made possible. What could be more reasonable than
that?

His opponents had no answer, but blocked the bill from instinctive
conservatism and fear of the gratia Caesar and his board would acquire.
The majority distrusted Caesar and admired Cato; when Cato opposed
the bill on principle, as an innovation to be resisted because it was an
innovation, they followed his lead. Infuriated at Cato’s obstructive
filibuster, Caesar eventually used bis coercitio to remove him to prison,
but had to back down when so many senators trooped out with him. ‘I’d
rather be with Cato in prison,’ said one, ‘than in the senate-house with
you.”4

The populace had presumably been able to follow all this in the
published proceedings of the Senate. The consul had given the patres
every chance to consider the bill on its merits, and emend it if they chose,
but they had refused. Now the people must decide. Caesar called Bibulus
to the rostra, and asked him before the citizen body what he thought of
the land bill. ‘I will have no innovations in my year of office’, he replied.
Caesar persisted, telling the people the bill would pass if only Bibulus
agreed. ‘I don’t care if you all want it’, snapped Bibulus; ‘you shan’t have
it this year.” So much for the will of the sovereign people. Caesar
followed up this tactical success by calling Pompey, who pleased the
crowd with a thoroughgoing endorsement of the bill. Would he help
Caesar to get it passed? ‘If any dares to raise a sword’, he declared
impressively, ‘I too shall raise my shield.’ He meant that he would call up
his veterans. Finally, Caesar brought Crassus to the rostra. Crassus,
Pompey’s lifelong rival, now indicated his approval of these words and
his support for the land law. As in their consulship eleven years before,
the two men seemed to have laid aside their rivalry for the public good.5

Bibulus had three friendly tribunes who might veto the bill, but their
colleague P. Vatinius was wholly Caesar’s man, and where popular
enthusiasm was so strong even a veto could be defeated. So Bibulus
(perhaps then, perhaps only after the passage of the bill) played a
different card. He announced that on every day when the comitia could

4 Dio xxxvitt.1—3 (3.2 for M. Petreius’ remark), Ateius Capito ap. Gell. NA rv.10.8.
5 Dio xxxviit.q—5, Plut. Crass. 12.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8007 ‘ssorg AlsIoaTUA eSpuquivey © ouTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

‘ayqnday arej aya Ul awWoY Jo asIUID YT “2 “BIg
SpseA QO}

os oO
rere
seujou obt ds 0

mln

WNHAV TIA

\\
‘
"

\Y
A

agg nit

. <abi

SNNILY Ted
SNOW

Hutu

CTH

WANYWOY vollsvg
snnan. \.
Grey pus-QUOONOD

WS
Ww.

ws ( ouqndey 7
Ss Oe] ul
ATS vLS3n ]
HA 49 Jd WIL leunqiy
*SJORORId
joRoy ,

VITILSOH
VIEND

NITOLIdV 9D

WAV INE VL

CAESAR AND CLODIUS 371

legally meet, he would be watching the sky for omens, thus rendering
every assembly technically invalid.®

Undeterred, Caesar and Vatinius fixed a day for the comitia tributa. The
Forum was packed before dawn, and armed men — Pompey’s veterans —
were on the steps of the temple of Castor. Again it was Cato who led the
opposition, this time forcing his way through the crowd as part of the
consul Bibulus’ escort. Undaunted by the opposition (someone emptied
a basket of excrement on him as he passed), Bibulus managed to get up
on to the platform with his lictors and his three tribunes to speak against
the bill (and perhaps declare unfavourable omens). There was uproar.
Bibulus’ fasces were smashed, one of the tribunes who tried to veto the
proceedings was hurled bodily down the steps, and a riot broke out in
which several people were injured. Bibulus’ friends got him safely into
the temple of Jupiter Stator; Cato tried to hold his ground and make a
speech of protest, but was physically removed by Caesar’s supporters;
when order was restored, in the enforced absence of the opposition, the
bill was voted into law.”

In the Senate the following day, Bibulus tried to get the law
invalidated, but the patres, intimidated by a hostile crowd, did nothing.
When Bibulus appeared on the rostra, Vatinius ordered him to be
imprisoned; the other tribunes, whose bench by the Tabula Valeria was
between the rostra and the Tullianum prison, were able to insist on his
release, but it was clear that Bibulus would never be allowed to exercise
his authority in public again. He retired to his house for the rest of the
year, and announced invalidating auspices on each comitial day, though
to do so elsewhere than in the assembly seems to have been an innovation
of doubtful force. His three tribune friends did the same.8

Caesar provocatively demanded from the Senate an oath of obedience
to the law, and got it — even, eventually, from Cato and Metellus Celer,
who resisted a long time. Celer remembered Metellus Numidicus’ refusal
to swear to the Lex Appuleia, but both men allowed themselves to be
swayed by Cicero’s argument that the Republic needed its defenders
present and active, not uselessly in exile.® The trial of strength had gone
totally Caesar’s way.

Not long afterwards Metellus Celer died. The command of Transal-
pine Gaul was therefore vacant, just at the time when the proposed
migration of the Helvetii and the installation of Ariovistus’ German

6 Dio xxxvi.6.1, Cic. Sest. 113 for the tribunes.

7 Dio xxxviir.6.2-3; App. BCiv 11.11; Cic. Vat. 5; Plut. Pomp. 48.1 (Lucullus among Bibulus’
supporters); Cat. Min. 32.2.

8 Dio xxxv111.6.4—6; Cic. Vat. 21 (see Coarelli 1985 (B 277) 1 53f and 139 for the topography); at
6.6, Dio refers to a subsequent attempt by Vatinius to imprison Bibulus, this time from his house (cf.
Cic. Vat. 22). Tribunes: Cic. Vat. 16. Legality: Linderski 1965 (F 100) 425-6.

9 Dio xxxvuit.7.1f, Plut, Cat. Min. 22.3—G (also M. Favonius).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

372 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

kingdom west of the upper Rhine had made the whole Gallic frontier
very unstable.!° The Senate made out that everything was under control,
granting C. Pomptinus a thanksgiving (and thus the expectation of a
triumph) for his subjugation of the Allobroges’ revolt. Vatinius’
ostentatious protest at this gesture — he appeared in black at a huge
banquet offered by. one of the consular candidates — gave a clear
indication of Caesar’s thinking about his own proconsular command.
No one can have supposed that the present consular ‘provinces’, the
forests and drove-roads of Italy, would remain long unchallenged."

First, however, Caesar had some debts to pay. The Asian society of
publicani was given back one third of the price they had paid to the
treasury for the right to farm the province’s taxes (that kept Crassus
happy), and the ratification of Pompey’s eastern settlement was finally
approved. Both measures were passed by popular vote; after his
experience with the land law, Caesar took nothing to the Senate for
discussion. !2

Lucullus, with Cato’s help, made a last vain attempt to thwart
Pompey, but could make no progress against overwhelming popular
Opposition, and was forced into public humiliation on his knees before
Caesar.!3 Cicero too was given a brutal reminder of vulnerability. Vainly
defending his ex-colleague C. Antonius against a doubtless richly
deserved charge of extortion, he complained about the political situa-
tion; in a matter of hours Cicero’s deadly enemy P. Clodius had had his
long-obstructed ‘transition’ to the plebs rushed through by Caesar as
consul and Pompey as augur, in good time to stand for the tribunate.!4
Now that he and Pompey were on different sides, Cicero had no defence
against the unpopularity he had earned with the execution of the plotters
in 63. Antonius’ condemnation was taken in some quarters as vengeance
for Catiline, and greeted with rejoicing; with Clodius now unleashed,
Cicero might well fear that he would be next.!5

After the events of 62-61, Caesar and Pompey had little reason to
cherish Clodius. But at the moment their enemies were also his enemies,
and his popular attacks on Cicero and ‘the tritons of the fish-ponds’
(Lucullus and his friends) made him a very useful fellow-traveller. He

10 Broughton 1948 (c 179) argues that Celer had given up his province and his death, therefore,
was irrelevant to Caesar’s plans.

1 Provinces: Suet. Ju/. 19.2. Metellus: Cic. Cael. 59f. Helvetii: Cic. Att. 1.19.2, Caes, BGall. 1.2.
Ariovistus: Cacs. BGal/. 1.31. Pomptinus and Vatinius: Cic. Vat. 30, with Schol. Bob. 149—50St.

12 Dio xxxvu.4.1; App. BCiv. 11.10. Publicant: Cic. Plane. 35 (cf. Att. 1.17.9). Pompey’s acta: Vell.
Pat. 11.44.2.

13 Suet. Iu/. 20.4, Plut. Lac. 42.6.

14 Cic. Dom. 41, Prov. Cons. 42, Sest. 16, Aft. vitt.3.3. Antonius may have been on trial for maiestas.

5 Cic. Flace. 95f; for Cicero’s invidia, cf. Att. 11.9.1f, 19.4 (contrast 1.16.11). Anxiety about
Clodius’ intentions: Aff. 11.4.2, §.3, 7-2, 9-3, 15-2 (April); 18.3, 19.1 and q, 20.2, 21.6 (June-July):
22.1f, 23.3, 24.5 (August?); OFr 1.2.16 (November?).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CAESAR AND CLODIUS 373

was independent and not at all predictable, so to keep him on their side
they had given him to understand that he might be offered a very
profitable and prestigious mission to Alexandria.16

That had come about as the result of the long-disputed recognition of
Ptolemy Auletes, now finally decided at a cost to the king of nearly 6,000.
talents (140 million sesterces).!? The money, which would no doubt go
to finance the land distribution, had to be fetched from Alexandria by a
suitably impressive Roman embassy. But there would also be some
embassies going East as a result of the ratification of Pompey’s
settlement; the patrician Claudii had long had interests in the Greek
world, and one of the missions was to king Tigranes of Armenia, at
whose court Clodius’ brother Appius Claudius had made a bold
impression ona mission from Lucullus in 71 (ch. 82, pp. 238-9). Perhaps
because they felt Clodius had been given enough with his transfer to the
plebs, Caesar and his two allies offered him not the Alexandrian embassy
but the Armenian one — an inferior job, as Cicero observed with
satisfaction. They also declined to have him on the board of twenty
administering the agrarian law.!8 Clodius was stung, and reacted sharply.

Cicero spent early April in his house in Antium on the coast. He was
profoundly depressed about the political situation, afraid of the future (‘I
shall be glad to enjoy even one more summer in my garden on the
Palatine’), and vowing gloomily to devote himself wholly to literary
study. But his letters show also a persistent hope that the pendulum
would swing back, his opponents fall out among themselves, his own
policy be vindicated.!9 On 19 April, emerging on to the Via Appia at
Tres Tabernae on his way south to Formiae, he ran into one of Clodius’
friends, young C. Scribonius Curio, son of a prominent noble:

Curio asked me whether I had heard the news. I said no. ‘Publius’, says he, ‘is
standing for tribune.’ ‘No, really?’ “Yes, and as Caesar’s deadly enemy, and
means to undo everything they’ve done.’ ‘What about Caesar?’ ‘Says he had
nothing to do with proposing Publius’ adoption.’

For ten days or so, away from it all in Formiae, Cicero clung to this vain
comfort (‘Publius is our only hope!’).20 Then came some hard news
which put it totally out of his mind.

Caesar’s land law had exempted the Campanian ager publicus from
distribution, no doubt as a concession to conservative opponents

16 Cic. Aft. 11.9.1 (‘de cynico consulari’); 5.1, 7.3 (‘legatio ... illa opima’ to Alexandria).

7 Suet. Iul. 54.3, Dio xxxtx.12.1, Cic. Vat. 29, Alf. 1.16.2, Fam. 1.9.7, Rab. Post. 6, Caes. BCiv.
II. 107.2.

18 Cic, Aff. 11.7.2-3 (‘subcontumeliose tractatur noster Publius’); Plut. Lue. 21 on Appius
(perhaps an episode from Archias’ epic poem on Lucullus’ campaigns).

9 Cic. Aft. 11.4~12, esp. 7.2-4, 9.1-3 (quotation from 4.7).

2 Cic. Aff. 1.12.2 (trans. Shackleton Bailey), 15.2; contrast 8.1 (‘bene habemus nos, si in his spes
est’), and see n. 15 above for Cicero’s fear of Clodius’ plans about himself.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

374 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

reluctant to leave the public treasury totally dependent on income from
abroad.?! Now, however, with the opposition reduced to impotence,
and after three months’ experience of trying to get landowners to sell the
commission enough land to distribute elsewhere, the exemption was
revoked; a second land law was passed, for the distribution of the ager
Campanus and the ager Stellas nearby to 20,000 citizens with three or more
children.22

This very controversial measure came at the same time as Pompey’s
remarriage. His new wife was Caesar’s daughter Julia. The combined
effect was to confirm Pompey’s commitment to Caesar’s programme in
the eyes of those who had hoped the alliance was merely temporary. Up
to now, Pompey had approved of Caesar’s measures, but had distanced
himself from the means employed to achieve them:

Very well, my good Sampsiceramus [Cicero liked to refer to Pompey by the
somewhat comic name of this oriental potentate], but what are you going to say
now? That you have arranged a revenue for us in Mt Antilibanus, and taken
away our rents in Campania? Perhaps the answer will be: ‘T’ll keep you under
with Caesar’s army.’

The prospects for the Republic did not look good. ‘I am entirely of your
opinion’, wrote Cicero to Atticus, ‘Sampsiceramus is out for trouble. We
can expect anything. He is confessedly working for absolute power ...
They would never have come this far if they were not paving their way to
other and disastrous objectives.’ Unable to believe that land reform
could be politically desirable in its own right, senatorial opinion
evidently feared a dictatorship like Sulla’s, with opposition held down
by terror and massacre.”3

These fears seemed to be confirmed by the tribune Vatinius, who now
passed a law giving Caesar a five-year command in Cisalpine Gaul and
Illyricum, with three legions. ‘T’ll keep you under with Caesar’s army’; if
necessary, these legions could be stationed only a few days’ march from
Rome itself. The Senate, which had tried to prevent Caesar from holding
a real province at all, now wanted to get him as far away as possible — or
did not dare to oppose his will. Transalpine Gaul, with an extra legion,
was added to his command by senatorial decree, on the proposal of
Pompey. Vatinius himself was named by Caesar as a legate, clearly in
order to avoid prosecution when he left office.”4

21 Dio xxxvitt.1.3 (otxoBev), Cic. Att. 1.16.1 (vectigal domesticum), cf. Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.80—3 on the
Rullan bill.

22 Suet. Iu/. 20.3, Dio xxxvutI.7.3, Vell. Pat. 11.44.4, Brunt 1971 (A 16) 314-8. Cf. Cie. Aft. tt.ts.1,
which implies a previous shortage of available land.

23 Cic. Att. 1.16.2, 17.1 (translations by Shackleton Bailey); 18.1, 19.2, 20.3, 21.1, 24.4 (fear of
caedes etc.); Plut. Caes. 14.6-8 (armed soldiers in the Forum, evidently in the context of the /ex
Cam pana).

24 Suet. In/. 22.1, Dio xxxvi1.8.5, Cic. Aft. vitt.3.3 (Pompey), Va. 35 (Vatinius).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CAESAR AND CLODIUS 375

Caesar also offered Cicero a post as legate; and then, when one of the
members of the land commission died, invited him to take the vacant
place. He knew that Cicero might be glad of an honourable excuse to
avoid Clodius’ year as tribune. He knew too that Cicero was resentful of
the senatorial establishment, which had so conspicuously refused to give
him the honour and recognition he felt his deeds as consul had
deserved.25 So why should he refuse? But Caesar was too late. Earlier in
the year Cicero could have been won over (so he confessed, perhaps
jokingly, to Atticus) by the offer of Metellus Celer’s place in the college
of augurs; but he was not going to be beholden to Caesar now that the
latter’s tactics had brought such universal condemnation from men
whose good opinion he valued more. In later years Caesar blamed
Cicero’s refusal for all that happened afterwards; ‘he was so hostile that
he wouldn’t even accept an honour at my hands.’ He could not see that
for Cicero in July 59 his hands were those of a potential Sulla.?6

Pompey was unpopular for the first time in his life, attacked from the
stage at the /udi Apollinares, savaged by Bibulus in edicts people crowded
round to read, abjectly diffident on the rostra where once he had been the
people’s hero. Cicero was sorry for him, though secretly glad at the
collapse of his g/oria. ‘For my part I do not fight what they are doing on
account of my friendship with him, and I do not endorse it, for that
would be to condemn all that I did in days gone by.’ But he was afraid of
what Pompey might be provoked to do under the strain of these
humiliations.27

Caesar too was uneasy about Pompey, seeing him unburden his
frustrations to Cicero, of all people. So it suited him very well when a
certain L. Vettius gave evidence in the Senate about a group of
aristocrats, led by young Curio, who were allegedly plotting to assassin-
ate Pompey. Brought to the rostra by Caesar and Vatinius, Vettius
proceeded to incriminate some senior senators as well, his final list
including Bibulus, Lucullus and even Cicero as well-wishers to the plot.
Cicero was sure the whole thing was a put-up job by Caesar, and certainly
it turned out in Caesar’s interests, with unresolved suspicions left to
poison the political atmosphere between Pompey and the senatorial
opposition. For Vettius was strangled in prison before he could be put
on trial and his evidence subjected to cross-examination.#

25 Cic. Aft. 1.16.2 (‘...ingratis animis eorum hominum qui appellantur boni, qui mihi non modo
praemiorum sed ne sermonum quidem umquam fructum ullum aut gratiam rettulerunt’), cf. 1.18.6,
20.3 (p. 366 above), 11.9.3. Caesar’s offers: 11.18.3, 19.4, Vell. Pat. 11.45.2.

% Cic. Alf, 11.5.2 (augurate, early April); 1x.2a.1 (Caesar’s complaint). Condemnation of regnum:
Att. 1.13.2 (April), 18.1f (June) 19.2, z0.3f, 21.1-5 (July), 22.6 (August). See especially 21.1: ‘de re
publica quid ego tibi subtiliter? rota periit.’

27 Cic. Att. 1.17.2 (Cicero’s Schadenfreude), 19.2 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1965-70 (B 108)), 19.3

(/udi), 21.3 (rostra), 21.4 (edicts), 22.6 (Cicero’s fears), 23.2 (Pompey’s dilemma).
2% Cic. Att. 11.24.2-4, Vat. 24-26.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

376 IO. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

The tensions caused by the Vettius affair exacerbated both the political
issues that dominated the second half of the year: the consular elections
and the prospects for Clodius’ tribunate.

It had been rumoured at first that Pompey and Crassus themselves
would stand for election as consuls for 58. That would have blocked the
other candidates, of whom five are known: the jurist Ser. Sulpicius
Rufus, who had been beaten by Murena for the consulship of 62;
Pompey’s friend A. Gabinius, the popular tribune of eight years before;
Q. Arrius, a novus homo whose patient accumulation of political credit was
second only to that of his friend Crassus; L. Lentulus Niger, probably
one of the three Lentuli who had prosecuted Clodius in 60; and L. Piso
Caesoninus, an undistinguished noble with a reputation for old fash-
ioned austerity. Arrius, like Gabinius, advertised his candidacy with a
gladiatorial show; he had hoped for the support of the three allies, but it
was not forthcoming. Lentulus’ prospects were damaged by Vettius’
allegation that he knew of the plot to kill Pompey; Piso, on the other
hand, emerged unexpectedly as a front runner when Caesar married his
daughter. In the event, Pompey’s friend A. Gabinius, the popular
tribune of 67, and Caesar’s new father-in-law L. Piso were the alliance’s
candidates.2°

Bibulus had succeeded in getting the elections postponed, and the
Senate deliberately did nothing about allocating consular provinces for
the successful candidates. When the vote eventually took place in
October, Gabinius and Piso were elected. A prosecution for bribery
against Gabinius came to nothing: the praetors, no doubt fearing
popular reaction, would not allow the prosecutor to make his appli-
cation. He countered with a violent public speech against Pompey as an
‘unofficial dictator’, and was lucky to escape with his life.%0

The result seemed to be good for Cicero. Piso, in spite of the tie with
Caesar, looked like a sound conservative; Gabinius was Pompey’s man,
and Pompey had given his word to protect Cicero from Clodius.
Moreover, next year’s praetors and tribunes (Clodius apart, of course)
were men Cicero felt he could trust.3! But Clodius himself was danger-
ously powerful. The Vettius affair had rallied popular feeling behind
Pompey and Caesar and against the senatorial opposition, thus restoring
the good old plebs—patres polarity Clodius relied on for his programme
of popular reform and vengeance on the people’s enemies. Cicero would
pay for the executions of December 63, though whether by a trial before
the people or by direct violent action remained to be seen. He himself

29 Cic. Aft. 11.5.2, 7-3, Vat. 25. Piso: Cic. Sest. rof, 21f; Plut. Caes. 14.5, Suet. Iu/. 21 for the
marriage (exact date uncertain).

3 Cic. Aft. 1.20.6 (Bibulus); Sest. 18, Pis. 12 (provinces); OFr 1.2.15 (C. Cato’s attempt to
prosecute).

31 Cic. OFr1.z.16. Pompey’s promise: Ast. 11.9.1 (‘quae de me pacta sunt’, cf. Sest. 15), 19.4, 20.2,
21.6, 22.2, 23.3, 24.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CAESAR AND CLODIUS 377

demanded to stand trial. But why should he be given a chance to defend
himself, when Lentulus and Cethegus had not? And in the comitia
centuriata, where the well-off predominated? For Clodius and the Forum
crowd, Cicero was manifestly guilty, awaiting not a trial but summary
punishment.*2

Cicero kept away from the senate-house and the rostra at this time. He
concentrated on forensic work — and when his defence speeches touched
on political questions, he kept his voice down.33 He shared with the
upper-class jurors alone his misgivings about the power of the ignorant
mob and the total loss of the Senate’s authority.34 But he did his own
cause no good by defending L. Valerius Flaccus, a man whose prosecu-
tors could confidently raise their voice in indignation beyond the jurors
to the citizens standing round the court. Like C. Antonius earlier in the
year, Flaccus was notorious for extortion in his province; Pompey, who
felt strongly on this subject, had been determined to get them both
before a jury.35

Flaccus, unlike Antonius, was acquitted — even though, shortly before
this, Caesar had passed a new and very comprehensive /ex repetundarum,
which was to remain for centuries the basis of the Roman law of
provincial administration. The juxtaposition was eloquent in itself.
Cicero could persuade senatorial and equestrian jurors to acquit a
corrupt governor; Caesar, the consul with whom the Senate would not
co-operate, brought to the assembly the legislation necessary for
reform.36 And Pompey, as in 70 and 67, looked benevolently on as the
Roman people attacked the abuse of senatorial authority. (Significantly,
equestrian jurors were not made liable for receiving bribes, as magis-
trates were, under this law.) In that very favourable atmosphere, Clodius
entered on his tribunate at the beginning of December.

Like Rullus five years before, Clodius had prepared his legislative
programme carefully in advance. He immediately announced four bills
to be put to the people at the beginning of January, of which the most
important was a thoroughgoing reform of the import of subsidized
grain, regulating the whole system from the cornfields of Sicily, Sardinia
and Africa, through the shippers and contractors to the warehouses and
distribution centres at Rome — and the five-odius ration was now to be

32 Cie. Flace. 4f, 96f, OFr 1.2.16, Sest. 40 (iudicium populi); n. 15 above. For Clodius’ tactical
quandary before the Vettius affair, cf. Aff. 1.22.1; for Cicero’s view of the Forum crowd as
contaminated by slaves, cf. Aff. 1.16.5, 11.1.8, 16.1.

33 Cie. Aft. 1.22.5, 23.3, Flace. 66 (contrast Su//. z0f, 33).

¥ Cic. Flace. 2, 3f, 15 (‘nullam enim illi nostri sapientissimi et sanctissimi viri vim contionis esse
voluerunt’), 94-6. How much of this was spoken in the Forum, and how much added for the written
version?

3 Cic. Att. 1.12.1 (Antonius), Flace. 14; cf. Flace. 69 (Flaccus’ prosecutor appeals to corona).

% App. BCiv. u.10, Dio xxxvint.4.1 ~ all Caesar’s consular business done through the comitia
tributa. Cic. Vat. 29 for the severity of the extortion law.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

378 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

free to all Roman citizens domiciled in the capital.3’7 In addition, the
collegia, banned by senatorial decree in 64, were to be restored; the use of
the auspices to block legislation, especially that by tribunes, was to be
rigorously controlled (Bibulus’ tactics to be outlawed, in effect); and the
censors were to lose their arbitrary power over senatorial membership, a
formal investigation and the agreement of both censors being required
henceforth before any senator could be expelled. This fourth measure
was probably to counter a danger already perceived in 64 — that the
opponents of reform would use the censorship to demote active tribunes
at the next /ustrum, thus effectively reactivating the deterrent of Sulla’s
law (debarring tribunes from further careers) which had been repealed in
75.38

Assured of popular support, Clodius could afford to ignore the
hostility of his fellow-tribune L. Ninnius Quadratus. The incoming
consuls still had no provinces to look forward to, and would need
Clodius’ help to get good ones; he could be sure they would put up no
opposition. As for Cicero, anxiously anticipating his enemy’s onslaught
on himself, Clodius professed to make a deal with him: no attack on the
legislation, no prosecution for getting Lentulus and Cethegus exe-
cuted.*° The security of Clodius’ position was demonstrated on the last
day of the year, when he allowed Bibulus no opportunity to address the
people as the consul gave his statutory end-of-term oath, and again on
the first day of 58, when his agent Sex. Cloelius celebrated the banned /udi
Compitalicii in anticipation of the law restoring the collegia.4°

The tribune’s tactics worked perfectly. There was no opposition on 1
January, and three days later the four bills were made law. Sex. Cloelius
set about administering the corn law, and organized the reconstituted
collegia with the maximum of provocative publicity, using the temple of
Castor as his headquarters.!

Clodius’ legislation, indeed the very legality of his tribunate, was
technically dependent on the validity of Caesar’s acts as consul in 59, all
of which Bibulus and his friends insisted had been illegal. The oppo-
sition concentrated on the greater enemy, hoping that the lesser would
fall with him. Two of the new praetors, L. Ahenobarbus and C.
Memmius, proposed that the Senate should not recognize Caesar’s

37 Cic. Don. 55 (‘omne frumentum privatum et publicum, omnis provincias frumentarias, omnis
mancipes, omnis horreorum clavis lege tua tradidisti’); Pés. 9, Asc. 8c for the four bills, passed on 4
January after the frinun nundinunr, for the provinces involved, see Rickman 1979 (G 212) 104-19.

38 Cic. Sest. 55f, Pis. 9, Asc. 7-8c; cf. Dio xxxvit.9.4 (64 B.c.), Asc. 66c, 78C (75 B.C.).

39 Dio xxxviit.14.1f (Ninnius and Cicero); Cic. Sest. 24, Red. Pop. 13, Pis. 28 (Piso and Gabinius).
The deal with Cicero was probably arranged by Atticus, who persuaded him that the restoration of
the collegia might even be to his advantage (Cic. Aft. 111.15.4, cf. Sest. 32).

49 Dio xxxvit1.12.3 (Bibulus, cf. Metellus Nepos and Cicero in 63); Cic. Pis. 8, Asc. 7c (Cloelius).
See on the co//egia and the games Lintott 1968 (A 62) 77-83.

41 Cic. Dom. 25 (Lex frumentaria); Sest. 34, Pis. 11, 23 (Castor temple), cf. Cae/. 78 for Cloelius.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CAESAR AND CLODIUS 379

consular acts. For three days, meeting outside the pomoerium so that
Caesar could be present, the patres debated the question at length. Caesar
counter-attacked to good effect, and when the praetors failed to get a
majority he left to continue with his recruiting for Gaul. Further attacks
on his officers also failed.*2

Caesar remained close to the city for as long as he could, to see how
Clodius’ programme would develop. The proximity of the proconsul
and his forces would help to intimidate the opposition, but perhaps
Caesar and Pompey thought it prudent also to keep an eye on Clodius
himself. Though it was in his interests too to insist on the validity of
Caesar’s acta, his popularity was so great that he might be tempted to
forgo that advantage if it suited him. He was quite capable (as was shown
later that year) of using the acta of 59 to blackmail Caesar, Pompey and
Crassus — a hostage for their acquiescence, as it were, like the consular
provinces for Piso and Gabinius and the memory of December 63 for
Cicero. So Caesar waited.

Confident and outrageous, Clodius proceeded to the second stage of
his programme, to find the money to pay for the corn law. Just as Caesar
had been able to use the king of Alexandria to raise money the year
before, so now Clodius made profitable arrangements with the Galatian
tetrarch Brogitarus, Deiotarus’ son-in-law (see ch. 8a, p. 269), who wanted
a kingdom of his own based on the Phrygian temple-state of Pessinus,
and with certain wealthy citizens of Byzantium, in exile after trial and
condemnation in their own city, who were asking for reinstatement
backed by Roman authority. Clodius named his price, got the credit
documents signed, and brought the appropriate legislation before the
sovereign people. Happy to usurp the Senate’s traditional role in foreign
policy, the assembly passed both laws.*3

The Ptolemy who was king of Cyprus had not followed his brother’s
example in 59; he had not paid for Roman recognition of his throne. So
now another Lex Clodia was passed, confiscating Cyprus and its royal
treasure for the Roman people. The new province would be attached to
Cilicia, and the next proconsul of Cilicia would have the immensely
profitable task of incorporating it.44 Who was it to be? Clodius
approached the consuls, and a deal was struck.

Two bills were announced on the same day, which would, after the
statutory interval, become law simultaneously.45 One was the long-

42 Suet. Iu/. 23.1, Cic. Sest. 40, Schol. Bob. 130, 146St; Cic. Vat. 33f; see Badian 1974 (c 165) 146f,
154-8.

b Cic. Sest. 56, Dom. 129 (syngraphae), Har. Resp. 28f (‘legati te tribuno dividere in aede Castoris
tuis operis nummos solebant’), 59. The consuls’ law de insula Delo, with its reference to ‘custodia
publici frumenti’, probably belongs in this context: see Nicolet ef a/. 1980 (B 212) 98f, cf. 149f fora
corrected text of CIL 1? 2500.

“ Cic. Sest. 57-59, Dom. 20, 52f; Badian 1965 (c 162) 115-18 on Cilicia.
“5 Cic. Sest. 24f (foedus), 53 (promulgatio), Pis. 21 (‘eodem et loci vestigio et temporis’).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

380 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

awaited allocation of the consular provinces, by which Piso and
Gabinius received Macedonia and Cilicia respectively; the other was a
restatement of the time-honoured principle that no Roman citizen
should be put to death without trial, specifying exile (‘interdiction from
fire and water’) as the penalty for a transgressor.*© The effect of the bill
was clearly to prepare the way for the condemnation of Cicero, by
making irrelevant his defence that the Senate’s emergency decree had
given him the legal power summarily to execute Lentulus and the others;
the law was the law, whatever the Senate might decide. Cicero was not
mentioned by name; technically, Clodius had kept to his agreement not
to attack him if he did not oppose his legislation. But the juxtaposition of
the two bills carried its own message. The consuls would get their
provinces if they left Cicero to his fate.

Though unwell, Piso received Cicero and explained the situation to
him. Gabinius had to havea rich province to avoid bankruptcy; he could
only get one by co-operating with Clodius; and just as Cicero had helped
C. Antonius to a valuable province in 63, so Piso now felt he had to help
Gabinius. He was sorry, but the consuls’ hands were tied. Pompey had
promised to protect Cicero, but now both he and Crassus pleaded
helplessness; it was the consuls’ business to bring the question to the
Senate; Pompey would take action against Clodius if authorized by
senatus consultum, but could do nothing otherwise. In fact, with the
validity of Caesar’s acts as consul still under fire, they could not afford to
oppose Clodius, who now boasted that the three allies were on his side.*7

Gabinius summoned the Senate to the temple of Concord, the scene of
the momentous decision on 5 December 63. On that day the eguites had
occupied the Clivus Capitolinus; now they assembled on the Capitol
again, not in arms but in mourning. The Senate pleaded; the eguites came
in a deputation and pleaded too; Gabinius was unmoved, confident in
the knowledge of a hostile crowd outside. On the motion of Cicero’s
friend the tribune L. Ninnius, the Senate too voted to wear mourning.
After the meeting, Gabinius and Clodius ordered the equestrian deputa-
tion to appear before the people in the Forum, where they were duly
buffeted and insulted. ‘You need not think’, said the consul, ‘that the
Senate has any power! As for the equites, they are going to pay for that day
when they stood on the Clivus with swords in their hands. And those
who were afraid then will now be avenged.’ Clodius took the same line:
Cicero must go, and come back only when the martyrs of 63 B.c. came
back from the dead.*8

4 Lintott 1967 (c 222) 163 holds with Vell. Pat. 1.45.1 that the bill was not intended to create
trials but simply banished those guilty.

47 Cic. Pis. 12f (Piso), 77-9 (Pompey and Caesar), Sest. 39-41 (Pompey and Crassus).

4 Cic. Red. Sen. 4 (‘si revixissent ii qui haec paene delerunt, tum ego redirem’), 12, 32, Sest. 26-8,
Dio xxxvitr.16.2-4. For the equites in 63, Cic. Att. 11.1.7, Phil. 11.16. 5

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CONQUEST OF GAUL 381

Cicero himself, meanwhile, was jeered and pelted whenever he
appeared in public. He no longer had the protection of Pompey’s
friendship; Pompey took care to keep out of his way, and the men Cicero
called to his advisory consilium were Pompey’s old enemies, the ‘fish-
pond-fanciers’ Lucullus and Hortensius, and Cato. Bitter things were
said about Pompey’s betrayal, which were seized on by Cicero’s enemies
to convince Pompey that his life was in danger. Clodius had succeeded in
manoeuvring Cicero into isolation — an enemy of the people, as his
brutally simple ideology required.49 Lucullus, who was used to that role
by now and could afford to ignore it, urged Cicero to stay and fight. Cato
probably did the same. Hortensius, on the other hand, had already
suffered the people’s anger for supporting the equites’ deputation; his
advice was for Cicero to withdraw and await a swift and triumphant
recall.50

What was Caesar’s position? He had no love for Cicero’s present
advisers, and Cicero had refused his own repeated offers of protection.
Clodius called a meeting in the Circus Flaminius, outside the pomoerium,
to question Caesar before he left for Gaul. But the proconsul’s careful
answer cannot have pleased him: Caesar repeated his known view that
the executions had been a mistake, but deplored any attempt to exact
vengeance for them by retrospective legislation.5! He needed Clodius
now, but one day he might need Cicero too.

For the time being, however, nobody was to have the benefit of the
great orator’s golden tongue. Cicero’s nerve broke. He took Hortensius’
advice and left the city — proof of a guilty conscience, his enemies said.
Caesar, knowing that Clodius’ popular triumph made his own position
secure for the moment, now at last left Rome for a war that urgently
demanded his attention.

II. THE CONQUEST OF GAUL

Caesar’s huge province ~ Narbonensian and Cisalpine Gaul, and the
Adriatic coast of Illyricum — was threatened from both east and north.
Burebista the Dacian had probably already expanded his power across
the Danube as far as the Gallic Taurisci, perilously close to the easily

49 Cic. Dom. 55; Plut. Cie. 30.5 (rnAq ai ABors BaAAovres), 31.2f (Pompey), 31.5 (Lucullus); Cic.
Aft. 11.9.2 (Hortensius), 15.2 (Cato); Cic. Sest. 41, 67, Dio xxxvitt.17.4 (Pompey’s suspicion).

50 Lucullus: Plut. Cie. 31.5, Cic. Dom. 110 (Clodius and M. Lucullus?), Plut. Luc. 43.1 for his
retirement from politics. Cato: Cic. Att. 111.15.2, pace Plut. Cat. Min. 35. Hortensius: Cic. OF r 1.3.8
(also Q. Arrius), Aft. 11.8.4, 9.2, 13.2 (treachery); Dio xxxvu.16.3f (also C. Curio), cf. Fam, vitt.2.1
(‘intactus ab sibilo pervenerat Hortensius ad senectutem’). Hope of quick recall: OFr 1.4.4, Ast.
IIL.7.2.

51 Dio xxxvim1.17.1f, referring back to his own speech on 5 December 63. For Piso at the Circus
Flaminius contio, see Cic. Red. Sen. 13, 17, Pis. 14.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

. 8ELLovaci
KP e
S C

a© Y
“r PARISII
) oY
°
sRICAE >
aan EMOR » ee
“Ve,

SUESSIONES

= 2 cpu

Uxellodunum,

Dordogne

Massilia

Land over 1000 metres

12 Gaul

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CONQUEST OF GAUL 383

passable Julian Alps and the vulnerable north-east corner of Italy.
Similarly, the Suebian Ariovistus, invited across the Rhine by the
Arverni and Sequani in their rivalry with the Aedui (Rome’s allies), had
installed an ever-growing body of Germans in lower Alsace, within easy
range of the still-disaffected Allobroges in the Roman province.*? The
northern threat had seemed most acute in 61-60, when the defeat of the
Aedui by Ariovistus had coincided with restless moves among the
Helvetii; they intended to migrate from Switzerland westwards to the
Atlantic coast, thus placing a dangerously warlike and powerful people
in control of the Garonne valley and the western end of Gallia
Narbonensis. But the Helvetian leader had died, and Ariovistus had been
bought off by diplomatic gifts and the title of Friend of the Roman
People. The disposition of Caesar’s legions — three at Aquileia and only
one in Narbonensis — showed where the main danger was perceived in
early 58.53

It was an unwelcome surprise, therefore, when news came that the
Helvetian migration had not, after all, been abandoned. They and their
allies had burnt their settlements and arranged a muster of over 300,000
men, women and children to begin the great trek on 28 March. It was
probably on or about 19 March that Cicero’s capitulation left Caesar free
to leave Rome. Eight days later he was at Geneva. .Buying time with a
pretence of considering the request of the Helvetii to pass through
Roman territory south of the Rhéne, Caesar blocked that route with
earthworks, destroyed the Rhone bridge, and ordered new forces to be
urgently recruited from the peoples of the Roman province. The
Helvetii now succeeded in persuading the Sequani to let their wagon
train pass through the Pas de |’Ecluse on the right bank of the Rhone.
The borders of the province remained inviolate, but the long-term
danger of the migration remained. The Helvetii would have to be
stopped somewhere, and against their tens of thousands of fighting men
Caesar needed more than just one legion.

The army at Aquileia had been sent for, and Caesar’s legates had been
busy recruiting in Cisalpine Gaul. To the Transpadanes, the rumble of
the Helvetian wagons was surely an ominous sound; old veterans of the
war against the Cimbri and Teutones now saw their sons and grandsons
enlist for a similar campaign. Leaving T. Labienus in charge at the
Rhone, Caesar returned across the Little St Bernard to take command of
five more legions — the three from Aquileia, and two made up of

52 Strab. vi1.298, 303 (Burebista); Caes. BGall. 1.31.3~-11 (Ariovistus).

53 Cic, Att. 1.19.2 (March 60); Caes. BGall. 1.2-4 (Helvetii in 61), 7.2, 10.3 (legions), 35.2, 43.4
(Ariovistus).

+ Caes. BGall. 1.5—9 (29.2 for the numbers). Dates: Plut. Caes. 14.9, 17.4, with Shackleton Bailey
1965-70 (B 108) 11 227.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

384 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

Cisalpine recruits (Latins having probably been accepted into the legions
as though they were citizens).

The news from Rome was very satisfactory. Clodius had rearranged
the Cyprus business. Ptolemy’s kingdom would be taken over, not in 57
by Gabinius as proconsul of Cilicia, but immediately, by a special
commissioner with ad hoc praetorian powers. The commissioner would
be none other than Cato himself, and the Senate had endorsed the choice.
A new law on the consular provinces returned Cilicia to praetorian
status, and compensated Gabinius with Syria instead, a province where
he had fought with Pompey and which offered opportunities for
profitable action either against the Parthians or in Egypt. Cato was an
honest man, and would bring back every penny of the king’s treasure;
but his acceptance of an extraordinary command, like those of Pompey
in the seventies, legitimized by a law of Clodius, whose tribunate was
only valid if Caesar’s acts as consul were valid, left the opposition to
Caesar and Pompey without a leg to stand on. Caesar wrote warmly to
Clodius congratulating him on his coup.55

Despite opposition from the Alpine tribes, Caesar led his five legions
into Transalpina by the most direct route (over Mt Genévre). He caught
up with the Helvetii too late to prevent the main body from crossing the
Sadne, just above its confluence with the Rhone, and passing into
Aeduan territory; however, he defeated their rearguard, the Tigurini,
quickly bridged the river himself, and followed. After fifteen days he
turned aside towards the main Aeduan centre at Bibracte, to restock his
army’s grain supplies. Confident, the Helvetii turned in pursuit. Caesar
placed all his baggage and equipment on a hilltop, guarded by his new
recruits and the auxiliaries, while the four veteran legions waited on the
slope for the enemy’s attack. The Helvetii were driven back, but
regrouped when their allies, the Boii and Tulingi, appeared in force to
take the Romans on the flank. Caesar detached the third line from each
legion to meet this new threat, and after a long struggle the Romans
prevailed on both fronts. The Helvetian camp was captured, their
fugitives hunted down, and they and their allies (except the Boii) sent
back to rebuild their villages and occupy again the territory they had
abandoned.*

Caesar now turned against Ariovistus. The excuse was that Ariovistus
was demanding yet more land from his hapless allies, the Sequani, and
the Aedui to the south-west and the Treveri to the north complained of
being plundered by further contingents of Germans whom he had
encouraged to follow him into Gaul. When Ariovistus defied his

55 Cic. Dom. 20-23, Sest. Gof, Vell. Pat. 1.38.6 (‘senatus consulto’), 45.4 (‘cum iure praetorio’); see
Badian 1965 (c 162) 110-13 on Cato’s title, 115-18 on Gabinius’ provinces.
% Caes. BGall. 1.10-29.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CONQUEST OF GAUL 385

diplomatic threats, Caesar marched his army eastwards into the territory
of the Sequani and occupied Vesontio (Besangon). From there he
proceeded up the valley of the Doubs and into the territory between the
Vosges and the upper Rhine. ‘What do you mean,’ demanded Ariovis-
tus, ‘by coming into lands that belong to me? This part of Gaul is my
province, just as the other is yours.’ Much good it had done him to
become a ‘friend of the Roman People’ if the Romans were now busy
detaching his tributary subjects from him! The parley came to nothing,
and Caesar found good reasons to force the Germans to fight. With all six
legions in action, he succeeded in breaking their battle-line and pursuing
them to the Rhine, killing large numbers.*’

Caesar had neutralized all the potential threats to the security of the
Roman province — at the cost of going beyond it and attacking a ‘friend
of the Roman People’, thus laying himself open to a charge under his
own law on the provinces (p. 377) among others. And it was clear that he
would not be content with what he had done. For he left his army with
Labienus in winter quarters deep in Sequanian territory, 150 kilometres
beyond the Rhone frontier; and when he returned to Cisalpine Gaul he
sent his recruiting officers out again to raise two more legions.*8

This time the news from Rome was more alarming. Clodius had gone
out of his way to humiliate Pompey over the East by freeing his captive
hostage Tigranes, son of the king of Armenia. When Gabinius, always
loyal to Pompey, protested at this, he and Pompey were set upon by
Clodius’ supporters; the consul’s fasces were smashed, and Clodius
formally declared his property consecrated to the gods.5° What was
worse, Clodius had challenged the validity of Caesar’s acts as consul,
bringing Bibulus himself to testify before the people. Evidently he was
confident enough in his popular support to defy the obvious counter-
argument that his own plebeian status was dependent on the validity of
Caesar’s acts. Who would daré to question the credentials of the man
who had given the Roman people free corn? Besides, any attack on the
tribunate and its legislation was now also an attack on Cato’s Cyprus
commission.

Clodius’ political tactics, unhampered by concern for principle or
consistency, had once again given him effective freedom of action.
However, his volte-face had freed Pompey’s hands with regard to
Cicero; on 1 June the Senate had at last debated the matter of Cicero’s
return. Its overwhelming vote in favour was vetoed, but the pressure

57 Caes. BGall. 1.30-54.

58 Caes. BGall. 1.54.2 (presumably at Vesontio), 11.2.1 (mentioned only after the news of the
Belgic threat).

59 Dio xxxvis.30.1f, Asc. 47¢ (Tigranes); Cic. Dom. 66, 124, Pis. 28.

® Cic. Dom. 40, Har. Resp. 48.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

386 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

had been kept up until 11 August, when a slave of Clodius ostentatiously
dropped a dagger in the vestibule of the temple of Castor as Pompey was
arriving for a Senate meeting. As always, the threat of assassination
sufficed to keep Pompey at home, and Clodius’ armed pickets made sure
he stayed there.®!

Was it for this that Pompey had restored the tribunes’ powers, and
Caesar defied the Senate in the people’s name?62 The Roman populace
must be urgently reminded who its true benefactors were. As consul,
Caesar had brought the Senate’s deliberations directly to the people by
the acta senatus, so too as proconsul, he would report to them on the way
the responsibilities they had entrusted to him were being carried out.

In Caesar’s commentary on his first year of campaign, one of the most
conspicuous episodes is the panic at Vesontio before the march into
Ariovistus’ territory. As Caesar tells it, the crisis was caused by the
cowardice of the equestrian officers ‘who had followed him from Rome
to cultivate his friendship’ — in pointed contrast with the steadfast loyalty
of the Tenth Legion, whom he then mounted as quasi-eguites for his
bodyguard at the parley with the German king. Ariovistus is made to
boast of the contacts he has had with Caesar’s enemies in Rome; in the
subsequent battle, the Roman victory is credited to the quick thinking of
Crassus’ son. Of Caesar’s six senatorial lieutenants — five legates and a
quaestor — the only one to be named is T. Labienus, the popular tribune
of 63 B.c., who is mentioned on three separate occasions; when he misses
a chance to attack the Helvetii, Caesar blames it on the incompetence and
cowardice of a certain P. Considius, of the same name (and no doubt the
same family) as an old senator who had dared to defy Caesar in 59.
Although Caesar was writing no doubt partly for the grateful provincials
of Narbonese Gaul (where an epic bard was already at work on the
‘Bellum Sequanicum’),® it is clear that his main intended audience was
the Roman populace, who must have enjoyed listening to these deeds of
conquest and vengeance carried out in their name. So too perhaps did the
Italians, who provided most of his troops and whose towns he was soon
courting with gifts.6

The consuls for the coming year would be P. Lentulus Spinther and
Q. Metellus Nepos. Lentulus, an enemy of Clodius, had been helped in

Cic. Sest. 67-9, Har. Resp. 49, Pis. 28; Asc. 46—7C, quoting the acta diurna (Shominibus armatis
praesidiis dispositis a re publica remotus Cn. Pompeius obsessus est’).

62 Dio xxxvitt.30.3 (Pompey and the frib. pot.).

63 Caes. BGall. 1.39.2, 40.14f, 42.5f, 44.12 (Ariovistus), 52.7 (P. Crassus). Labienus: 10.3, 21f,
54.3; for Considius (21f), see Cic. Aff. 1.24.4, Plut. Caes. 14.8.

Prisc. Inst. t.497H (Varro Atacinus). Gallic Roman citizens mentioned by name: BGa//. 1.19.3,
23.2, 47-4, §3-5—8. Caesar’s care for the provincia: 1.8.3, 10.2, 14.3, 28.4, 33-4.

6 Populus Romanus: e.g. BGall. 1.13f, 35, 45. Vengeance: 1.7.4, 12.5-7 (L. Cassius, L. Piso). Gifts

to Italian towns: Suet. Ju/. 28.1. There is no evidence for the traditional, but inherently improbable,
view that Caesar wrote all seven books of his Gallic commentarii together, in 51-50 B.C.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CONQUEST OF GAUL 387

his campaign by Caesar; Nepos, Cicero’s enemy since his chaotic
tribunate in 62, had broken with Pompey thereafter and opposed
Caesar’s consulship. That suggested that Caesar and Clodius might be on
different sides in the issue that now dominated politics in the city ~ the
question of Cicero’s return. One of the tribunes-elect, P. Sestius, had
even come to Cisalpine Gaul to enlist Caesar’s support on Cicero’s
behalf.6 Caesar was cautious: Clodius not only had great support among
the Roman populace, support that might still be mobilized after he had
gone out of office, but unlike any other popular tribune he could count
on the influence of a great patrician family, with all that that meant in
patronage and political alliances. His brother Appius was praetor-elect,
his other brother Gaius was likely to be successful at the next praetorian
elections (for 56); consulships might well follow, and Caesar had to look
ahead to the expiry of his five-year command.

Meanwhile, as the proconsul held court in each of the Cisalpine
colonies in turn, the messengers doubtless came north with regular
news. On 29 October eight tribunes proposed a bill for Cicero’s recall; it
was vetoed. On 10 December it became clear that the new bench of
tribunes was also eight to two in favour of Cicero. On 1 January Metellus
Nepos declared himself ready to sacrifice his private animosity to the will
of the Senate; a unanimous resolution for Cicero’s recall was blocked by
a tribune. On 23 January another tribune tried to put a bill to the people
for recall, but was prevented by riot and bloodshed (gladiators had been
provided by the praetor Ap. Claudius); Q. Cicero, pleading for his
brother, was driven from the rostra in fear for his life.6? Pompey,
prudently out of Rome, was touring the country towns of Italy,
mobilizing the landowners for a possible vote in the centuriate assembly:
tota Italia, the new citizen body created by the census of 70-69, might
prevail over a city populace still faithful to its patrician demagogue.
Before he left to rejoin his legions, Caesar let it be known that he
approved of Pompey’s initiative.%

Labienus’ reports during the winter must have told Caesar how the
peoples of northern Gaul had reacted to his provocative wintering of the
army in the territory of the Sequani. The tribes of the north-west (in
Normandy and Brittany) seemed to be acquiescent, but the Belgic
peoples north-east of the Seine were mustering their forces to resist.
Only the southernmost of them, the Remi, were reluctant. Caesar took
his two newly recruited legions to join the six at Vesontio, and then,

6 Lentulus: Dio xxxtx.6.2 (Clodius), Caes. BCiv. 1.22.3f. Metellus: Cic, Ass. 11.12.2 (attitude in
$9). Sestius: Cic. Sest. 71.

67 Cic. Att. 111.23, Sest. 69-77, Red. Sen. 5f, 21f, Red. Pop. 11f, Pis. 34f, Dio xxx1x.7.2 (gladiators).

68 Cic. Prov. Cons. 43, Pis. 80, Fam. 1.9.9 (‘seque quae de mea salute egisset voluntate Caesaris
egisse’), Red. Sen. 29, Red. Pop. 16.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

388 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

without even the pretence of a defensive motive, marched north into the
territory of the Belgae.

The Remi sent an embassy of submission, and told Caesar that the
combined forces of the Belgic coalition numbered over 240,000. The
Suessiones, Bellovaci and Ambiani were successively invaded and forced
to surrender. Beyond them to the north-east, however, the Nervii were
defiant. Joined by the Atrebates and Viromandui, they were waiting in
ambush in the wooded heights above the Sambre as Caesar’s army
started to build its camp on the other side of the river. Their headlong
assault took the Romans totally by surprise, and it was only by the most
desperate improvisation, and heroic work by Labienus and the Tenth
Legion, who returned to the rescue after pursuing and defeating the
Atrebates, that the Nervii were eventually beaten and their army
effectively destroyed.

Caesar now detached a legion under P. Crassus to march south-west
and bring into submission the peoples between the Seine and the Loire.
With the rest, he continued north-east into the territory of the Atuatuci,
who had been on their way to help the Nervii and were now defying the
Romans from the heights of their fortress above the Meuse. They
surrendered at the sight of the siege-towers, but then tried to break out at
dead of night; Caesar therefore enslaved all he found within, 53,000 of
them; their sale must have been very profitable.”°

When in due course reports arrived from young Crassus that the
peoples of north-west Gaul had submitted and given hostages, Caesar
sent laurelled despatches to Rome. The whole of Gaul, as far as the Rhine
and the Ocean, had been brought under Roman control in two seasons’
fighting. He put his legions in winter quarters in Belgic territory and
along the Loire, with the exception of the Twelfth, which he sent to the
Val d’Entremont (the upper Rhéne, south-east of Lake Geneva) to
secure the Great St Bernard route across the Alps. Then he hurried back
to the Narbonese province, to Cisalpina, and eastward to Illyricum.’!

On the way, he heard that his despatches had been greeted at Rome
with immense enthusiasm, that the Senate had voted a fifteen-day
thanksgiving (even Pompey had only had ten), and that the proposer of
the motion had been — Cicero.72

Pompey’s appeal to Italy on Cicero’s behalf had proved successful. In
July, when Rome was always crowded for the /udi Apollinares and the
elections, the consuls had written to the municipalities sumznoning all
patriotic citizens to the capital. A series of weighty senatorial decrees had

69 Caes. BGa//. 11.128. 7 Caes. BGaill. 11.29-34.
1 Caes. BGall. 11.34f, 11.7.1 (Illyricum), 8.2—5 (hostages). Litterae laureatae: Cic. Pis. 39, Pliny
HN xv.133.

72 Caes. BGall. 1.35.4, Cic. Prov. Cons. 26f, Balb. 61.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CONQUEST OF GAUL 389

been passed while the urban crowd was thus outnumbered, and the loyal
Italians were asked to return on 4 August for the vote of the centuriate
assembly.73 They had done so, and with the support of the tribunes P.
Sestius and T. Annius Milo, who had raised their own forces to counter
Clodius’ strong-arm men, the centuriae duly voted for Cicero’s recall.”

On the day the Senate declared in the Capitoline temple that Cicero
had saved the state, the immortal gods had seen fit to reduce the price of
corn ~— or perhaps, as cynical persons suggested, the dealers had released
enough of their stocks to bring the price down from the crisis level that
had driven a hungry crowd to stone the theatre audience at the /adi
Apollinares.7> Administering the Lex Clodia frumentaria meant organiz-
ing supply and storage as well as distribution, and the man Clodius had
put in charge of it — his agent and scriba Sex. Cloelius — was perhaps more
at home with angry mobs in the streets of the capital than with the
wealthy landowners and shippers on whose co-operation the system
depended. Cato had not yet brought back the king of Cyprus’ treasure;
public money was probably short, and they could get better profits
selling in other markets. They liked to open their granaries in Rome at
the last minute anyway, to get the highest price just before the new
harvest, and this time they could manipulate the shortage to help their
friend Cicero.76 Not surprisingly, therefore, when this artificial respite
was over and the price crept up again, the crowd had blamed Cicero
himself. Encouraged by Clodius’ agents, they had stoned Metellus
Nepos as he summoned the Senate to the temple of Concord.””

Cicero was making a triumphal progress up the Via Appia from
Brundisium.7® He arrived on 4 September to a great welcome, in which
the hungry populace took part as well. The Senate was in daily session
about the corn shortage. It was a crisis comparable with that of the
pirates in 67; perhaps the same solution was called for now? Both plebs
and patres were divided. Clodius and Pompey, the new champion and the
old, competed for the people’s allegiance, and Pompey’s record of
achievement was demonstrably superior. In the Senate, Clodius resumed

73 Cic. Sest. 116-23 (demonstrations at /udi), 128-30, Red. Sen. 25-7, Pis. 34, Prov. Cons. 43.

™ Sestius and Milo: Cic. Red. Sen. 19f (‘vim vi esse superandam’), Red. Pop. 15, Sest. 84-92, Mil.
94; Cicero’s reputation suffered as a result of their tactics (Ass. tv.2.7, dedecus). For the centuriae as the
whole Roman people, including Italy, as against Clodius’ urban supporters, see Dom. 89-90
(‘homines in campum non tabernis sed municipiis clausis veneranv’).

75 Cic. Dom. 15 (the two explanations), Sest. 129 for the occasion; Asc. 48c (/udi Apollinares).

7% Cic. Dom. 11 (‘frumentum provinciae frumentariae partim non habebant, partim in alias terras,
credo, propter avaritiam venditorum miserant, partim, quo gratius esset tum cum in ipsa fame
subvenissent, custodiis suis clausum contenebant, ut sub novum mitterent’); for sub novum see
Arusianus Gramm. Lat, vit.5o9 Keil, Cic. 1 Verr. 3.214. Sex. Cloelius: Cic. Dom. 25f, with Wiseman
1985 (B 127) 39-41. Public money: Cic. Dom. 23 (‘erepta ex visceribus aerarii’), OFr 11.6.1 (‘inopia
pecuniae et annonae caritas’, still in Apri! 56). Cicero’s friends: e.g. Cic. Fam. xum1.75 (C. Avianius
Flaccus). 7 Cic. Dom. 11-14 (probably in August, when Metellus had the fasces).

78 Cic. Att. tv.1.4 (‘iter ita feci ut undique ad me cum gratulatione legati convenerint’).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

390 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

his aristocratic persona, joining his social equals, Pompey’s old enemies,
in attacking extraordinary commands.”

On 7 September, the first day of the /udi Romani in honour of Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, the Senate met in his temple. The Capitol was
crowded, and those senior senators who opposed Pompey pointedly
stayed away. As Cicero told Atticus:

A crowd flocked first to the theatre and then to the Senate, clamouring at
Clodius’ instigation that the shortage was my doing ... Pompey was eager for
the commission, and the crowd called on me by name to propose it. I did so ina
full-dress speech. In the absence of all the consulars except Messalla and
Afranius, because, as they alleged, it was not safe for them to speak, the Senate
passed a decree as proposed by me, to the effect that Pompey should be asked to
undertake the matter and appropriate legislation be introduced.

On 8 September the consu/ares were present, and tried in vain to block the
motion; Clodius dubbed Cicero ‘hostis Capitolinus’, and taunted him
with having gone over to the people.

The consuls drafted a law giving Pompey control over grain supplies through-
out the world for a period of five years. Messius [a tribune] proposed an
alternative bill which gives him control over all moneys, and in addition a fleet,
an army and authority in the provinces superior to that of their governors.

Although the tribune’s proposal, with its ominous reference to imperium
maius, failed, it spelt out with brutal clarity the realities of Roman
imperialism in the fifties B.c.: the empire was for the direct benefit of the
Roman people, and its tribute and the armed force necessary to control it
might have to be placed directly in the hands of the people’s nominee.®°

That was the atmosphere in which Caesar’s despatches came to Rome.
It was like the great days of the sixties again — Pompey in command on
behalf of the people, whether the Senate liked it or not, and news of
glorious conquest coming in from the ends of the earth. The unreliable
Clodius, resorting in desperation to tactics of open terrorism (arson and
attempted murder), was losing his popular support.8! So it came about
that the Roman people’s unprecedented fifteen-day thanksgiving to the

% Cic. Att. 1v.1.5 on Cicero’s return (‘gradus templorum ab infima plebe completi erant’), 1.6 on
support for Pompey among plebs and boni. Clodius: Dom. 3-31, esp. 4, 18f (parallel with Lex
Manilia), 26.

8 Cic. Att. 1v.1.6-7 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1965—70 (B 108)), Dom. 4-10, Dio xxx1x.g9.2f. 6
September: Cic. Dom. 6, 15. Ludi Romani: the fasti Antiates maiores show the games beginning on
either 7 or 8 September; Cicero’s reference to a theatre — presumably in the area Capitolina — confirms
the earlier date.

81 Cicero: Cic. Aft. 1v.2.5 (‘illi, quos ne tu quidem ignoras, qui mihi pinnas inciderant, nolunt
easdem renasci’), cf. Fam. 1.7.7 (July 56). Clodius: A7z. 1v.3.2f (‘post has ruinas, incendia, rapinas
desertus a suis’); when Sex. Cloelius burnt down the temple of the Nymphs to destroy the corn-
supply records, there was great popular hostility at his trial and indignation when the senatorial
sudices acquitted him (Cic. OFr 11.5.4, cf. Cae/. 78).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT AND PARTHIA 391

immortal gods for Caesar’s victories was voted by the Senate on the
proposal of Cicero, who was indebted to him as well as to Pompey for his
recall.

The prospects looked very good for Caesar. As Pompey had con-
quered from the Caucasus to the Red Sea, so now Caesar had conquered
from the Atlantic to the Rhine—and perhaps soon also to the Danube. As
he hastened east towards Illyricum, Caesar dictated a much briefer
commentary on the second year of his command. This time, the Roman
people did not need persuading.®2

III. EGYPT AND PARTHIA

As in Gaul, so in the eastern Mediterranean, the commands voted by the
Roman people had been carried out to good effect. Pompey had
organized the Seleucid realm in Syria as a province in 64; after two
successive praetorian governors it was now held by Gabinius with a
special three-year command under a Lex Clodia.®3 Ptolemy of Cyprus,
dispossessed of his kingdom by another Lex Clodia, had poisoned
himself in despair; with the people’s commissioner (Cato) now complet-
ing his account of the royal treasure for transfer to Rome, the island was
attached to Lentulus Spinther’s province of Cilicia.®4 As for the king of
Alexandria, who had paid nearly 6,000 talents in 59 to keep his throne, he
had been expelled by his infuriated subjects (ch. 8¢, p. 319); his daughter
Berenice now reigned in his stead, and her agents were in Syria looking
for a Seleucid pretender to be her consort. Ptolemy Auletes himself was a
guest at Pompey’s Alban villa, requesting a Roman army to restore him
to the kingdom Rome had guaranteed.85

In 57, while Lentulus Spinther was still consul, the Senate voted that
he, as proconsul of Cilicia, should restore the king to Alexandria.
However, one of the tribunes of 56, Clodius’ friend C. Cato, publicized a
prophecy found in the Sibylline books (Clodius was one of the XVviri
sacris faciundis who were allowed to consult them) warning the Romans
not to give help to the king of Egypt ‘with a multitude’.86 That suited the
conservative majority among the consu/ares: it ruled out any dangerous ad
hoc military command, whether for Pompey (which is what the king
himself wanted), or for the detested Gabinius (whose two legions in
Syria were closest to the scene), or even for Lentulus Spinther (whom his

82 BGall. 11 is only half the length of 1. Danube: see n. 52 above.

83 App. Syr. 51 (L. Philippus and Cn. Lentulus Marcellinus, now consuls in 56); for Gabinius’
command, see Cic. Donr. 23, 55, 80, with Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 272.

% Plut. Cat. Min. 36.1 (death of king), 36.2, 38 (accounts); Vell. Pat. 11.45.4f, Strab. x1v.684f.

83 See n. 17 above; Dio xxx1x.12, 13.1, 57-1, Strab. xvit.796, Cic. Rab. Post. 6.

8 Dio xxxix.15; Cic. Fan. 1.1.3, Pis. 51 (senatus consultum of 57); OFr 11.2.3, Fam. 1.4.2 (oracle);
Har. Resp. 26 (Clodius ‘Sibyllinus sacerdos’).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

392 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

peers suspected of harbouring inappropriate personal ambitions).8’

When the Senate debated the question on 13 January 56 B.c., it was
overwhelmingly agreed that no army should be used. P. Servilius
Isauricus (cos. 79) was urging that Ptolemy should not be restored at all.
M. Bibulus proposed an embassy of three senior senators without
imperium (excluding Pompey, therefore); Crassus preferred an embassy
of three with ¢wperium; Q. Hortensius, supported by Cicero and M.
Lucullus, wanted Lentulus Spinther to go; L. Volcacius Tullus (cos. 66),
supported by L. Afranius and other friends of Pompey, wanted Pompey
to go. Bibulus’ proposal was defeated; Hortensius’ might have been
passed, but a tribune friendly to Pompey intervened, and Spinther’s
opponents, who had no love for Pompey either, took the opportunity to
delay any decision. On 2 February C. Cato announced a bill to be put to
the people rescinding Lentulus Spinther’s command. Another tribune,
L. Caninius Gallus, wanted the people to appoint Pompey as ambassador
to restore the king. Clodius’ supporters were urging that Crassus be sent;
Clodius’ quarrel with Pompey had perhaps strengthened his ties with
Crassus. The consul Marcellinus blocked the tribunes’ legislation by
putting festivals and thanksgivings on the available comitial days; C.
Cato countered by threatening to prevent the elections. Eventually, the
Senate voted on Servilius Isauricus’ proposal, and resolved not to
restore Ptolemy at all; predictably, that was vetoed.88

The king had retired to Ephesus to await events, and Rome was glad
to be rid of him. Public opinion had been sickened, not only by his
blatant bribery but because early in 56 the leader of the embassy which
had come to represent the Alexandrians was assassinated in Rome; one of
the king’s agents, P. Asicius, was tried for the murder, but Cicero, no
doubt acting at Pompey’s request, got him off.89

Pompey’s close association with the king was only one of several
reasons for his dramatic loss of popularity at this time. Perhaps hopes
had been raised too high at the time of the corn-supply crisis; there really
was a shortage, and Pompey could not make it disappear in a couple of
months as he had once done with the pirate menace. His legates were
doing their best, but the price had still not come down. Clodius, now in
office again as aedile, was glad to exploit popular dissatisfaction. He was
also able to divert the blame for the street violence of 57 B.C. on to his

87 Cic. Fam. 1.1.1f (‘senatus religionis calumniam non religione sed malevolentia et illius regiae
largitionis invidia comprobat’), 4.2 (‘ut ne quis propter exercitus cupiditatem Alexandream vellet
ire’). Pompey: Cic. Fam. 1.1.4, cf. Plut. Pomp. 49.6. Spinther: Cic. Faz. 1.7.8 (‘quem tamen illi esse in
principibus facile sunt passi, evolare altius certe noluerunv’), cf. 1.1.3 ad fia. (unsound on Pompey).

88 Cic. Fany. 1.1.3, 2-1f, 4.1; OFr 11.2.3, 3.1f, 5.2-5; Fam. t.5a.2, 7.4; Plut. Pomp. 49.6 (Caninius, cf.
Cic. Faz. 1.7.3); Dio xxx1x.16.1f.

8 Dio xxxix.13—14, Strab. xvit.796 (for Pompey’s involvement); Cic. Cae/. 18 (Crassus’
hostility), 23f, 51, OFr 11.9.2 on Asicius,; Wiseman 1985 (B 127) 60-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT AND PARTHIA 393

enemy T. Milo, whom he was now busy prosecuting before the people.
Milo was defended by Pompey and Cicero, on whose behalf he had
mustered his anti-Clodian forces the year before. But Clodius was
confident now in the support both of the urban populace and of the
senatorial establishment, perennially hostile to Pompey.

When Pompey spoke for Milo on 7 February, Clodius gave him a
rough time:

Pale with fury, he started a game of question and answer in the middle of the
shouting: ‘Who’s starving the people to death?’ ‘Pompey’ answered the gang.
‘Who wants to go to Alexandria?’ Answer: ‘Pompey’. ‘Whom do you want to
go?’ Answer: ‘Crassus’ (who was present as a supporter of Milo, wishing him no
good).

Two days later, C. Cato attacked Pompey bitterly in the Senate, with the
silent approval of Bibulus, Curio and the conservatives. Pompey told
Cicero he was sure that Crassus too was supporting both C. Cato and
Clodius, and that there was a plot against his own life; he was bringing up
men from the country to defend himself.

The news from Gaul was also discouraging. Caesar’s legate Ser. Galba
had had to abandon his winter camp in the Alps, and the maritime
peoples of the north-west were in revolt. Caesar was now asking for ten
legates —an unusually large number —and for money to pay the four extra
legions he had raised. But Marcellinus’ obstruction of tribunician
legislation was blocking that, and in any case there was an acute shortage
of public money: Cato was not yet back with the Cyprus treasure, and
Pompey needed large sums for the corn supply. Serious moves were
being made to stop distribution of the Campanian land in order to
restore public income from rents, and Pompey seemed ready to accept
this.?! Caesar’s old enemies felt confident. Cicero was preparing to press
the Campanian question. L. Ahenobarbus had tried as praetor in 58 to get
Caesar’s command declared invalid; now feeling sure of election as
consul, he was threatening that this time he would carry out his
intention. Vatinius, on whose law the command depended, had failed to
win the aedileship and was now being hounded by an ominously self-
confident Cicero. There was even an attempt by one of the tribunes to
have Caesar recalled and brought to trial. Nothing came of that, but it
showed how violently the pendulum of popular sympathy was swing-

® Cic. OFr 11.3.2-4 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1980 (6 111)), Fam. 1.sb.1 (‘visus est mihi
vehementer perturbatus. Itaque Alexandrina causa. . . videtur ab illo plane esse deposita’). Cf. OFr
11.1.3, §-3 (Milo and the bons), 6.1 (annonae caritas).

Gaul: Caes. BGa//. t11.1-9 (and see n. 71 above). Decem legati, stipendia: Cic. OF r 1.5.3 (monstra),
Fam, 1.7.10. Pecuniae inopia: OFr 1.6.1, Prov. Cons. 11. Campanian law: QFr 11.1.1 (tribune P. .
Rutilius Lupus), 6.1, Fam. 1.9.8 (Cicero).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

394 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

ing.°2 Now that the old rivalry of Crassus and Pompey was out in the
open again, the triple alliance seemed to be doomed.

Caesar, with more than half his command still to run, was in the
strongest position of the three. Already the Via Flaminia had seen
ambitious office-seekers on their way to solicit his support — among them
Clodius’ brother Appius, who would be standing for the consulship next
year. Now, in April, Caesar came south to the Italian borders of his
province, to confer first with Crassus at Ravenna and then with Pompey
at Luca.%3 He offered his disaffected partners a deal: if the elections were
delayed until after the campaigning season, when some of Caesar’s
soldiers could get to Rome and vote, then Ahenobarbus could be kept
out and Pompey and Crassus themselves elected; tribunician legislation
would then give them commands, if that was what they wanted. Caesar
had no wish to monopolize the opportunity of imperial conquest: let his
own command be extended at the same time, and they could share the
glory and profit equally between them.™

Pompey sailed to Sardinia, where he had a serious talk with Quintus
Cicero, working as his legate on the corn supply. He told him to remind
his brother of a pledge Quintus had given for his behaviour at the time of
his recall from exile. Caesar rode north to rejoin his army for the
campaign against the Veneti. Clodius ostentatiously praised Pompey at a
public meeting, and dropped his prosecution of Milo; Cicero decided not
to attack the Campanian land law on 15 May, as he had planned; the
threat of contentious tribunes’ bills disappeared, and the Senate itself,
with Cicero prominent in support, voted Caesar his legates and the pay
for his legions.

Cicero was not very proud of his change of course, but he knew whom
to blame for it — the ‘optimate’ group (now centred round Bibulus) who
had never really seen him as one of themselves and were on insultingly
good terms with their fellow-aristocrat Clodius. In June or July, when
an attempt was made to have one or both of Caesar’s Gallic provinces
assigned under the Lex Sempronia to the consuls about to be elected,
Cicero defeated it with a great speech in praise of Caesar and the
conquests that were now almost completed. He concluded pointedly:

9 Suet. Iu/. 23.1 (with Badian 1974 (c 165) for the date), 24.1; Cic. Vat., Fam. 1.9.7, OFr 1.4.1
(‘dis hominibusque plaudentibus’).

9 Suet. Iu/. 23.2 (petitores), Cic. OFr 11.5.4 (Appius); Caes. BGall. ut.9.1 (shipbuilding on the
Loire); Cic. Fam, 1.9.9, cf. Plut. Caes, 21.2, Pomp. 51.3, Crass. 14.5, App. BCiv. 11.17.62 for the
senatorial well-wishers who thought it worth making the trip to Luca. Crassus was there too,
according to the late sources.

4 Pluc. Caes. 21.3, Pomp. 51.4, Crass. 14.5f, App. BCiv. 11.17.63.

% Cic. Fam. 1.9.8-10, OFr 1.7.2 (Cicero); Har. Resp. 51f (Clodius); Fam. 1.7.10 (‘perpaucis
adversantibus omnia quae ne per populum quidem sine seditione se (posse adsequi arbitrabantur
per senatum consecuti sunt’), Prov. Cons. 28, Balb. 61.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT AND PARTHIA 395

I should like to convince all of you, but I shall not be too disappointed if the
senators I fail to convince happen to be those who defied the Senate’s authority
by defending my enemy [Clodius}, or those who will criticize my reconciliation
with ¢heir enemy [Caesar], even though they themselves have not hesitated to be
reconciled with one who is their enemy as much as mine.®

Cicero wanted Macedonia and Syria, the provinces given to Piso and
Gabinius under the Lex Clodia, to be assigned to the next year’s consuls,
or better still (though he expected this would be vetoed), to the praetors
of the present year, thus getting his enemies recalled even sooner. In fact,
no tribune defended Piso. Macedonia was made a praetorian province,
and Cicero could look forward to taking half his vengeance as early as
55.97 Syria, however, was too important to be anything but a consular
province; Gabinius could complete his three-year command there, and
one of the next year’s consuls would succeed him in 54.

Gabinius had been paying particular attention to the economic
organization of his province. ‘Financial deals with tyrants, settlements,
robberies, acts of piracy ...’; the details are irretrievable behind the
slanderous screen of Cicero’s invective. Gabinius had ostentatiously
refused to co-operate with the publicani, punishing those distinguished
equestrians for their deputation on Cicero’s behalf in March 58. No
doubt that was welcome to the Syrians themselves, as was Gabinius’
revival of the tetradrachm coinage with the types of Philippus Philadel-
phus (the last Seleucid king before Tigranes took over in 83); but in the
end the main purpose of all his activity was surely to maximize Syria’s
contribution to the public income of the Roman treasury.%8

There had also been serious military work to do, when Alexander, son
of the deported Aristobulus, overran much of Judaea in rebellion against
his brother Hyrcanus, whom Pompey had left in charge in Jerusalem.
Gabinius had marched south in strength, and defeated Alexander in a
pitched battle. Judaea then needed to be secured, by the fortification of
strategic cities, and the Nabatean Arabs, who had never been properly
subdued, demanded his presence as they had demanded that of his
praetorian predecessors in 60-58.99 Good reasons, no doubt, to keep
Gabinius and his legions within easy striking distance of Alexandria just
at the time Ptolemy Auletes was in Rome asking for an army to reinstate

% Cic. Prov. Cons. 47; Alt. 1v.5.1f (subturpicula mihi videbatur esse waAww6ia’), Fam. 1.7.7f,
9-10-18.

17 Cic. Prov. Cons. 3~17; cf. 2 (‘ad ulciscendi tempora reservabo’), 8 (‘nihil dico, patres conscripti,
nunc in hominem ipsum’, anticipating the In Pisonem), 17 (expected veto).

% Cic. Prov Cons. 9; Crawford 1985 (B 145) 203—5. Publicani (see n. 48 above): Cic. Prov. Cons. to-
13, Cf. Pés. 41, OFrit.12.2, 11.2.2, with Braund 1983 (c 178). No doubt Gabinius was using the local
elites rather than the publicani as his partners in exploitation.

% Joseph. AJ xtv.82—-90, BJ 1.160-8, App. Syr. 51, cf. Cic. Prov Cons. 9, Sest. 71; Smallwood 1976
(D 156) 31f. No doubt it was then that Samaria was renamed Gabinia (Cedrenus Hist. Comp. 84a).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

396 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

him. But Gabinius had few friends in the Senate; the command had been
given to Lentulus Spinther, and then in any case made nugatory by the
Sibyl’s prohibition of force.

In May 56 the Senate had refused Gabinius a thanksgiving for the
Jewish campaign, and supported the pab/icani in an attack on his fiscal
arrangements.!© And now his province was promised to one of the
consuls of 55. But at least Cicero had not been able to persuade the Senate
to recall him early, like Piso. He could count on two more campaigning
seasons; what could he do with them? First, he had to fight again in
Judaea, for Aristobulus conveniently escaped from Rome to renew the
rebellion his son had attempted the previous year.!°! Then, secure in the
south at last, Gabinius turned his attention north and east.

Phraates of Parthia was dead, murdered by his sons Orodes and
Mithridates, who were now fighting each other for the royal power.
Mithridates came west, to ask for help from the man who nine years
before had so alarmed his father by marching to the Tigris as Pompey’s
legate. Gabinius was tempted to intervene. Though he had killed
enough Jews in the battle against Aristobulus to qualify him for a
triumph, he knew it would take an exceptional campaign of conquest to
make any impression on the hostile Senate that had rejected his
supplicatio.'0

Among Gabinius’ advisers was Archelaus, the son of Mithridates of
Pontus’ renegade general of that name. Pompey’s reorganization of the
East had made him priest-king of the temple-city of Comana in
Cappadocia, but he was ambitious fora greater realm. Claiming to be the
son of the great Mithridates himself, he might well be acceptable in
Parthia or one of its dependencies, and since his real father had proved a
loyal ally to Rome, he would be more reliable than either of the warring
sons of Phraates.

It was a bad moment to ask the Senate to approve anything Pompey or
his friends might want. The tribune C. Cato, with help from Clodius as
aedile, was effectively carrying out the strategy planned by the three allies
at Luca — to prevent the consular elections from taking place until some
of Caesar’s soldiers could come to vote and the consul Marcellinus went
out of office. Pompey and Crassus did their best to remain above the
conflict, but when challenged by Marcellinus about their intentions had
to admit that they would be candidates when the elections were
eventually held. Caesar’s enemy L. Ahenobarbus was persevering with

100 Cic. OFr 11.7.1, Prov. Cons. 14f, Pis. 41, 45; Har. Resp. 1-7, 17 (a slanging-match between
Clodius and Cicero). See Shackleton Bailey 1976 (B 109) 70 on ‘P. Tullio the Syrian’ (i.e. Pantaleo?),
supported by Clodius against the publicani (Har. Resp. 1).

101 Joseph. AJ x1v.92-7, Bj 1.171-4, Plut. Aag. 3.1.

12 Parthian civil war: Dio xxx1x.56.2, App. Syr. 51. Jewish casualties: Joseph. Af x1v.g5, cf. Val.
Max. 11.8.1 (5,000 wa acie required for triumph).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT AND PARTHIA 397

his own candidacy, strongly supported by his brother-in-law M. Cato
(now back from Cyprus), who urged him to resist the tyranny of the
three allies and their aim to monopolize the armies and provinces of the
Republic. '%

Not surprisingly, therefore, the Senate rejected Gabinius’ proposal
about Archelaus. While the proconsul continued his preparations for the
Parthian campaign, Archelaus himself seized a new and more splendid
opportunity. In Alexandria, Berenice had been disappointed with her
Seleucid consort, a vulgar character (nicknamed the Salt-fishmonger)
who lasted only a few days before being strangled at the queen’s orders.
Now her agents approached Archelaus. Gabinius demurred, and put
him in irons, but the self-styled son of Mithridates escaped (Gabinius’
enemies said the proconsul was bribed to let him go) and took control of
the perilous kingdom of Egypt.1%

For Ptolemy, waiting in Asia Minor, this bad news from one direction
coincided with good news from the other; for now his friend Pompey
was once more in political control at Rome. When Marcellinus went out
of office, the new year, 55 B.c., opened with no magistrates. Elections
were set in train under an interregnum. Young P. Crassus had come from
Gaul, bringing with him substantial numbers of Caesar’s soldiers and a
glamorous new military reputation of his own. (His campaign in south-
west Gaul, to bring the peoples of Aquitania into subjection, gave the
promise of a great general in the making.) With this help, and some
strong-arm tactics to intimidate Ahenobarbus, Pompey and Crassus duly
entered on their second consulship.'5 In the elections for the other
magistracies which followed — not without more bloodshed — Vatinius
and Milo won praetorships, while M. Cato did not. The allies were firmly
in control, and proposed to remain so: ‘I dare say it’s true’, remarked
Cicero to Atticus, ‘that in the lists in their little notebooks the future
consuls take up as many pages as the past ones.’!0%

The elections took place in January; and it must have been immedi-
ately afterwards that Pompey sent an urgent confidential message to
Ptolemy in Asia Minor, with a letter for him to take to Gabinius. The
king and his retinue set off for Syria, hoping to catch the Roman
proconsul and his army before they marched east into Mesopotamia.?0

Pompey and Crassus did their best to revive the atmosphere of their
first consulship, fifteen years before. It was for the good of the Republic

103 Dio xxx1x.27.3-30.4, Plut. Pomp. 51.5—52.1, Crass. 15.1-3, Cat. Min. 41.2f.

104 Strab. x11.558 (od« éxizperotons 5€ ris avyxAjrov), xv11.796, Dio xxx1x.57.

195 Dio xxx1x.31, Plut. Cat. Min. 41.4f, Crass. 15.4f, Pomp. 52.1f. P. Crassus: Caes. BGall. 111.20-7,
Cic. Brut. 282.

106 Cic. Aft. 1v.8a.2 (trans. Shackleton Bailey (B 108)), cf. OFr 11.8.3 (‘tenent omnia idque ita
omnis intellegere volunt’). Cato and Vatinius: Cic. Fam. 1.9.19, Dio xxx1x.32, Plut. Cat. Min. 42,
Val. Max. vi1.5.6. Milo: Cic. Mz/. 68. 107 Dio xxx1x.55.3, 56.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

398 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

that they had allowed their names to go forward for election; now, as in
70, censors would be elected and the tribunes would undertake necessary
reforms; a new law on juries, a new bribery law anda new sumptuary law
would be introduced.'08 But times had changed since 7o B.c. The very
successes of the populares had compromised their integrity. It was no
longer so much a question of asserting the liberty of the people as of
exploiting a hugely expanded empire for its (and their own) benefit — and
expanding it still further. Pompey himself had attained a position of
unprecedented wealth; he and Crassus, as Hortensius, of all people,
ironically pointed out, would hardly be credible as the sponsors of a law
to curtail personal expenditure (so that proposal was dropped). And
when the tribune C. Trebonius came forward with a bill to give the new
consuls five-year commands in Spain and Syria, with unlimited man-
power and the right to make peace and war as they pleased, the pretence
of Pompey and Crassus that it was no idea of theirs cannot have deceived
anyone. !09

Northern Spain, the territory of the Astures and the Cantabri, was still
wholly unconquered. Young P. Crassus knew all about the Cantabri,
who had given help to their Gallic neighbours in Aquitania during his
recent campaign; in Hispania Citerior, meanwhile, Metellus Nepos was
having serious difficulties with a rebellion led by the Vaccaei on the
Douro, at the northern limit of his province. Clearly the opportunity’
existed for a major campaign, to do for Spain what Caesar had done for
Gaul, and extend Rome’s empire to the whole coast of Ocean from
Gibraltar to the Rhine.!!° As for Syria, that offered both Egypt and the
Parthians. Gabinius would not have time to do much in Parthia before
his command expired at the end of 55; and with Archelaus now in
Alexandria the restoration of Ptolemy would certainly need a war,
whatever the Sibyl said.

Trebonius faced possible vetoes from two of his colleagues, P.
Aquillius Gallus and C. Ateius Capito. When the vote came, Gallus was
locked in the senate-house (he had imprudently spent the night there, so
as to be on the scene at first light), while Capito, with M. Cato and other
opponents of the bill, was forcibly prevented from entering the Forum.
There were scuffles, and some bloodshed, but the law was passed; then
the consuls put to the vote a bill renewing Caesar’s command for five

108 Rei publicae causa: Dio xxxtx.30.1f, Plut. Pomp. 51.5, Crass. 15.1f. Censors (P. Servilius
Isauricus cos. 79, M. Messalla cos. 61): Cic. Aft. tv.9.1, 11.2, ILLRP 496. Lex indiciaria: Cic. Pis. 94,
Phil. 1.20, Asc. 17. Lex de sodaliciis: Cic. Planc. 36, Fam. vut.2.1. Proposed sumptuary law: Dio
XXXIX. 37-2.

109 Dio xxx1x.3 3.1 (pretence), 37.3f (Hortensius).

110 Caes. BGal/. 111.23.3—6, 26.6 (P. Crassus), Dio xxx1x.5q (Metellus), cf. 33.2. Caesar himself,
meanwhile, had plans to advance beyond the Ocean, and beyond the Rhine.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT AND PARTHIA 399

more years. That too was passed; when his messengers reported it Caesar
left Cisalpine Gaul earlier than usual, to begin the next stage of his
conquests, in Germany and Britain.!!

The consuls cast lots for the two provinces. Pompey, still in charge of
the city’s corn supply, intended to stay at Rome and govern his province
through legates. Crassus, on the other hand, with his son the dashing
cavalry commander, was eager for the glory and the wealth of conquest
that his two political allies had so spectacularly achieved; though now
about sixty years of age, he would go and lead a great campaign. In
Spain, or in the East? The lot gave him Syria, and he was delighted.
Perhaps, as Plutarch suggests, he looked as far as Bactria and India. From
the furthest west to the furthest east, from the Atlantic to the Indian
Ocean (not forgetting Egypt) the dominions of the Roman people
would know no limit.!!2

Meanwhile, the exiled king of Egypt had made contact with Gabinius.
He promised 10,000 talents — 240 million sesterces — if the proconsul
would turn his legions south to Alexandria. Gabinius’ council was
divided, with most of his officers against the plan. But the letter the king
had brought no doubt promised protection when Gabinius got back to
Rome, and perhaps it could be argued that the terms of the Lex Clodia
allowed such intervention beyond his province. Besides, there was a
military excuse: Archelaus’ fleet was harassing the coasts of Palestine and
Syria, and such piracy must be stamped out. So the advance into
Mesopotamia was abandoned. With a strong force of cavalry sent ahead
under Antony, and supplies and auxiliary forces ordered from Antipater
in Jerusalem, Gabinius and his legions marched south.!#3

The campaign was swift and brilliantly successful. Antony’s advance
force, with Jewish help, negotiated the notoriously difficult route
through desert and marsh from Gaza to Pelusium. Following up,
Gabinius’ army defeated the Alexandrians in a pitched battle, which
Archelaus did not survive. No doubt he was lucky not to die at the king’s
hands, as Berenice did. Gabinius installed a garrison of 500 Gallic and
German auxiliaries to secure Ptolemy’s position, and left him to raise the
10,000 talents by murder and taxation.!!4

Gabinius was in no hurry to report all this to Rome, but the news had
reached Puteoli by 22 April 55.!!5 Crassus was furious (evidently

1 Dio xxx1x.34—-6, Plut. Cat. Min. 43, Hirtius BGa//. vitt.s 3.1. Caesar: Caes. BGal/. 1v.6.1.

112 Plut. Crass. 16.2 and Comp. Nic. Crass. 4.4, cf. Cat. 11.1-12; also Nic. Dam. FGrH 90F 180.95,
Cat.-29.12 (Britain as ‘ultima occidentis insula’), Cic. Dom. 60 (Gabinius, Babylon and the Persae).

3 Cic. Rab. Post. 19-21, Pis. 48-50; Plut. Ant. 3.2, Dio xxx1x.56.3—-6. According to Joseph. AJ
x1v.98, Gabinius had already crossed the Euphrates. Pirates and Lex Clodia: Cic. Rab. Post. 20, cf.
Dio xxx1x.56.1, $6.6, 59.2.

"4 Plut. Ant. 3.3-6, Joseph. AJ xtv.g8f, BJ 1.175, Dio xxx1x.58, Strab. x11.558, XvIT.796.

"5 Dio xxx1x.$9.1, Cic. Att. tv.10.1, :

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

400 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

Pompey had not confided in him), but a few days later he changed his
tune. It is a reasonable guess that up to that moment Crassus had been
keeping both Egypt and Parthia open as options for the great campaign
of his proconsulship, and that his irritation at losing one of the
possibilities was overcome — perhaps by his son, who had ambitions to
emulate Alexander — with the reflection that the other one was both more
glorious and politically less invidious.!!6

The rewards of conquest and of the expansion of empire were
dramatically displayed at the magnificent games Pompey put on in
September, when he dedicated the great theatre complex begun after his
triumph in 61. Conspicuous among the statues in its huge portico was
one of Pompey himself, as the master of the world, surrounded by the
fourteen nations he had conquered.'!7? In the summer came news of
Caesar’s crossing of the Rhine; in the autumn, even more astonishing, of
his venture beyond Ocean itself to the island of Britain. A second
thanksgiving was voted him, this time for twenty days.'!8 By then
Crassus had finished his preparations, and was ready to set out to rival
the heroic grandeur of his two partners — and attain, if Cicero’s account
of his motives is to be trusted, even greater wealth.!!9

The two tribunes who had failed to prevent the Lex Trebonia did their
best to frustrate it by resisting the consuls’ recruiting programme, but to
no effect. Their final attempt came as Crassus was actually leaving the city
in November. Not even Pompey’s presence as he escorted his colleague
on his way could counteract the combined effect of their demonstrations
~ first an announcement of bad omens, then an attempt (frustrated by the
other tribunes) to arrest the consul himself, and finally a formal curse by
C. Ateius at the city gate. ‘They say’, wrote Cicero from Tusculum, ‘that
our friend Crassus left Rome in uniform with rather less éclat than his
coeval L. Paulus, also consul for the second time, in days gone by. What a
rascal he is!!20

A crucial part of the strategy was young P. Crassus and the Gallic
cavalry he had led so brilliantly in Aquitania. Caesar could not spare
them yet; he was going to follow up his autumn reconnaissance in Britain

116 Cic. Fam. 1.9.20, with Rawson 1982 (c 247) 5436; cf. Cic. Brut. 282 on P. Crassus.

"7 Pliny HN xxxvt.41, Suet. Nero 46.1, with F. Coarelli, Rend. Pont. Acc. 44 (1971-2) 110-21.
Plut. Pomp. 40.5 and 42.4 for the post-triumph context; but it may not have been technically ex
manubiis (cf. Pliny HN vit.97 on the temple of Minerva).

18 Caes. BGa//. 1v.38.5, Tanusius ap. Plut. Caes. 22.3 (Cato’s counter-proprosal that Caesar
should be handed over to the Germans for violating the truce). Cf. Cic. Pis. 81 (Rhine), Dio
XXxIx.53, Plut. Caes. 23.2 (Britain); Vell. Pat. 11.46.1 (‘alterum paene imperio nostro, ac suo,
quaerens orbem’).

9 Cic. Fin, 111.75.

120 Cic, Att. 1v.13.2 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1965-70 (B 108)): Paulus cos. 1 167 and victor over
Macedon at Pydna. Div. 1.29, Dio xxx1x.39 (also for the recruiting), Plut. Crass. 16.3—6 (Pompey’s
presence), Vell. Pat. 1.46.3. Cicero had been formally reconciled with Crassus by Pompey (Cic. Fam.

1.9.20).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EGYPT AND PARTHIA 401

with a full-scale campaign there in 54. So Crassus would spend his first
season in preparation until his son could join him the following winter
with 1,000 horse, when the great expedition could begin in earnest.!2! At
least he would have no trouble in the south: Gabinius had come back
from Alexandria to face yet another Jewish revolt (under Alexander son
of Aristobulus), which he put down bloodily, and had followed his
success with a victory over the Nabatean Arabs.!22

When the elections were eventually held, probably in December 55, L.
Ahenobarbus won the consulship, and Cato the praetorship, that
Pompey and Crassus had denied them the year before. Ahenobarbus
continued his attempts to get Caesar recalled, and with his colleague Ap.
Claudius Pulcher attacked Crassus too. But they could not compete with
Cicero’s eloquence, and no doubt the fourth instalment of Caesar’s
Commentaries, with its exciting narrative of the German and British
campaigns, kept popular sympathy with the three dynasts. Cato and his
friends made fine defiant speeches, but nothing ever came of them in the
end.!23 Caesar was expected to conquer Britain and then return to Rome;
both the conquest and the return would have a political effect as
powerful as those of Pompey ten years before. One man who expected to
benefit was Q. Cicero, now a legate of Caesar’s and probably with hopes
of higher things. Another was C. Memmius, one of the four evenly
matched consular candidates, who in the summer of 54 ruined his
chances by first entering into a huge bribery deal with the consuls and
one of his competitors, and then revealing the details of it. Whatever
moral authority the consuls had was destroyed by the scandal.!24

In September, in the middle of this affair, Gabinius finally and
reluctantly entered Rome. Within a month he was on trial before the
quaestio de maiestate, no doubt for leaving his province to go to Egypt.
Cicero, under intense pressure from Pompey to defend his old enemy, at
least did not prosecute him, but gave evidence with studied moderation.
The jury yielded to Pompey’s prayers, and Gabinius was acquitted to
face another trial, this time for extortion.'25 The gods promptly showed
their displeasure by making the Tiber inundate the city, causing great

121 Plut. Crass. 17.4, Dio xi.21.2, with Rawson 1982 (c 247) 544-7; P. Crassus was still in Rome
early in 54 (Cic. Fam. v.8.4). For the strategic purpose of the Osrhoene garrisons, see Sherwin-
White 1984 (D 291) 283f.

12 Joseph. AJ xtv.100-3, BJ 1.176—8 (10,000 dead in the battle near Mount Tabor); for Gabinius’
fina! settlement of Judaea under Antipater, see Smallwood 1976 (D 156) 35.

123 Cic. Aft. 1v.18.4 on Cato (‘id ego puto ut multa eiusdem ad nihilum recasurum’); Fam. v.8.1
(Cicero supports Crassus against the consuls), cf. OFr 1.14.5 on the uneasy political calm; Suet.
Nero 2.2 (Ahenobarbus).

124 Cic. Aft. 1v.15.7, 17.2f, OFr 1.15.4, 1.1.16, 2.3, 6.3, Fan. t.9.2; for the details, see Gruen
1969 (c 208). Memmius and adventus Caesaris: Att. 1v.6.6, OF r 11.2.3, 6.3. Q. Cicero: see Wiseman,
1987 (A 133) 34-41 On OFr 11.15.26, 11.6.1.

1% Cic. OFr ut.t.15, 2.1f, 3.3, 4.26, 5.5 (cf. 5.4 ‘ne odium quidem esse liberum’).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

402 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

damage and loss of life. The censors organized large-scale operations to
repair the river banks, but they laid down their office without having
been able to perform the /ustrum.'26

Rome was uneasy. The populace was already in mourning, for the
death in childbirth of Caesar’s daughter, the wife of Pompey. (Defying
the consul Domitius and the Senate, they had her buried in the Campus
Martius, where her tomb was now under the flood water.)!2?7 The
electoral scandal was causing nervous talk of a dictatorship, and even the
news from Caesar had turned sour: after early successes, he had had to
return from Britain for fear of risings in Gaul, and by December there
were rumours of a real disaster.!28 If it took place in that atmosphere,
Gabinius had no chance at his second trial (but it may have been held
later rather than earlier in 53). This time, Cicero gave in to Pompey, and
got the worst of both worlds — he defended Gabinius, and Gabinius was
condemned. !29

Meanwhile, young Crassus had brought his father the 1,000 horsemen
from Gaul. Artavasdes, king of Armenia, came with 6,000 cavalry of his
own to the expeditionary headquarters in Syria; but he took them away
again to defend his own kingdom when he learned that Crassus was
aiming to march, not north-eastwards through Armenia and down the
Araxes valley into Parthian territory from the north, but directly into
Mesopotamia by the Euphrates crossing at Zeugma. Orodes, now firmly
installed as king, was leading the main Parthian army against
Armenia by the Araxes route; his chief general, the Surenas, had his
forces in Osrhoene, where Crassus’ garrisons, installed the year before,
got their first unnerving view of the Parthians’ mail-clad cavalry. !3°

In the spring of 53 B.c. the two Crassi, father and son, led the great
expedition eastwards. The strategy was to march down the Euphrates to
Seleucia, and thus detach the Parthians’ nearest dependencies, Mesopo-
tamia and Babylonia. But when the scouts, not far south of the Zeugma
crossing, reported the tracks of cavalry in the empty land to the east,
Crassus turned in that direction, guided by the Arab ruler of Osrhoene,
Abgar.!3!

When the two armies met, not far from the river Balik, the Roman
legions were immediately hard pressed by the combined effect of the

126 Cic. OFr 11.5.8, Dio xxx1x.61; ILLRP 496 (censors’ works).

127 Dio xxx1x.64, Plut. Caes. 23.4, Pomp. 53.2—4 (Cic. QFr 111.1.17 for the date, September 5 4).
See L. Cozza 1983 (B 283) for a possible fragment of her e/ogium: ‘[statuam . . .] post mortem
ponendam cen[suit sepe]lirique eam in Campo Martio iu{ssit]’ — sc. populus Romanus?

128 Cic. OFr 11.14.5, 11.6.4, 6.6, Aft. 1v.18.3, 19.2 (dictatorship); Caes. BGall. v.22.4, Cic. Fam.
vit.10.2 (‘vos istic satis calere audio’).

129 Dio xxx1x.63.2-5, Cic. Rab. Post. 19, 33, Wal. Max. tv.2.4. Date: Lintott 1974 (Cc 223) 67-8.

130 Plut. Crass. 18.2~19.2, Dio xi.16.1f; Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 284-7.

3 Plut. Crass. 19.3-23.4, Dio XL.17.3-21.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

FIN DE SIECLE 403

Parthian archers and the mailed cavalry. Young Publius, with his 1,000
horse and eight cohorts of legionaries, broke out and pursued the
apparently fleeing enemy, but was soon surrounded. The Parthians rode
back to the main force with his head stuck on a spear; then Abgar of
Osrhoene changed sides and attacked the Romans in the rear; but the
legions, despite appalling casualties, doggedly held out till nightfall. The
next day the survivors withdrew to Carrhae, from where in due course
they escaped piecemeal to the west and north, to Syria, Cilicia and
Armenia. Thirty thousand men did not return.132

Crassus himself was caught and killed, lured by the false offer of a
treaty as his party fled northwards. The Surenas sent his head and hand
(with its signet ring) to Orodes in Armenia, but used one of the prisoners
to impersonate him in the victorious return to Seleucia. Crassus had
plundered the temples of Jerusalem and Syrian Hierapolis to finance his
glorious campaign; now Jahweh and Atargatis were avenged, as the
pseudo-Crassus, dressed as a woman, rode into the capital of Babylonia
in derisive triumph, escorted by lictors whose fasces were hung with
money-bags.!33

IV. FIN DE SIECLE

According to one authoritative chronology, later used by Augustus for
his consular fasti, 53 B.c. was Year 700 from the foundation of Rome.
Other versions put the seventh centenary one or two years later,!34 but
whatever the exact date, it must have been observed more in anxiety than
hope.

The year opened with no consuls in office, and only the tribunes and
plebeian aediles among the other magistracies. That had happened two
years before, but then it was only a brief and temporary expedient till
Pompey and Crassus were elected under an interregnum. This time there
was no sign of an end to the political deadlock, and the cause of it — the
consular election scandal — was a direct threat to the authority of the
law.!35 The precedents of the interregna in 82 and 77 B.C. were not
encouraging, and the demands from Pompey’s friends for a dictatorship
(Pompey himself was tactfully away from Rome) merely exacerbated the

132 Plut. Crass. 23.4-29.5, Dio xL.21.2—25.5. Casualty figures: Plut. Crass. 31.7, App. BCiv, 11.18,
with Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 289 n. 49.

133 Plut. Crass. 28.2-32.3, Dio xt.26—-7. Jerusalem: Joseph. AJ x1v.105—9, BJ 1.179. Hierapolis:
Plut. Crass. 17.5.

14 Fasti Capitolini(ed. Degrassi, Inser. Ital. xt11.1). Cato put the foundation in 752 B.c. (fr. 17, as
interpreted by Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.74.2); Polybius (v1.11a.2), Diodorus (vit.5.1), and the Graeci
annales followed by Lutatius, Cornelius Nepos and Cicero in De Republica (11.18, Solin. 1.27) put it in
751. Both the latter versions depended on calculation from the supposed date of the fall of Troy.

135 See n. 124 above; Cic. OFr 11.2.5 (‘magna res in motu est, propterea quod aut hominum aut
legum interitus ostenditur’); see also 1.15.4 and A/t. 1v.15.8 on Jeges and indices.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

404 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

sense of crisis.!56 For the first time in five years there was no tale of
conquest arriving from Gaul. Caesar had not even come back to
Cisalpine Gaul to hold assizes, but fought on in the north to regain
control after the Eburones’ attack on his winter camps. One of the camps
had fallen, with the loss of one whole legion and another five cohorts —
say 7,000 men in all.!37 A few months after that disaster came the news of
Carrhae.

The messenger from Syria will have found Rome obsessed with games
~ Favonius’ games as plebeian aedile, organized for him by Cato with
conscious frugality; the games promised by young Curio in memory of
his father, from which Cicero tried vainly to dissuade him; Milo’s games,
on which he lavished three patrimonies in an attempt to win over the
Roman populace for his consular campaign; and now, in July, the /adi
Apollinares, for which the tribunes schemed to prolong the absence of
curule magistrates so that they, and not the urban praetor, should have
the glory of presiding over them.'38 No wonder Cicero was in despair for
the future of the Republic.

No longer able (since May 56) to carry out the longed-for role of
independent senior statesman, Cicero was busy expressing his political
creed by other means. He had recently written his De Oratore, on the ideal
orator-statesman; now he was working hard at his De Repubiica, a treatise
‘on the ideal constitution and the ideal citizen’, and at its sequel, De
Legibus.'40 In the mean time, however, the man who for seven years had
been in Cicero’s eyes the very antithesis of everything his ideal Republic
stood for was once again at the centre of affairs.'4!

Clodius was a candidate for the praetorship, with a well-publicized
programme of popularis legislation ready to be enacted as soon as he was
in office. Chief among the proposals was the bill Manilius had failed to
carry at the end of 66, allowing freedmen to vote throughout the thirty-
five tribes. Clodius’ free-corn law had caused a great increase in the rate

136 See n. 128 above; Cic. OFr 111.7.3, Dio x-.45.5 (Pompey absent, memories of Sulla). Cf. Cic.
Aff. 1x.15.2 (‘Sulla potuit efficere ab interrege ut dictator diceretur’) and Cae/. 70 (‘rei publicae paene
extremis temporibus’) on 82 and 77 B.c.

137 Caes. BGall. v.24—58, esp. 24.4 and 37.6 (losses), 53.3 (Caesar winters with army).

138 Plut. Cat. Min. 46.2—5 (Favonius and Cato); Cie. Fam. 11.3 (Curio), esp. 3.1 (‘neque quisquam
est quin satietate [sc. ludorum] iam defessus sit’); Cic. OFr 11.6.6, Fam. 11.6.3, Mil. 95 (Milo); Dio
Cass. xL.45.3 (tribunes). For the date of Favonius’ tribunate, see J. Geiger, RSA 4 (1974) 161-3; for
Milo’s ambitions, see Lintott 1974 (c 223) 64-8.

139 Cic. Fan. 11.5.2: ‘rem publicam adflictam et oppressam miseris temporibus ac perditis
moribus’.

140 Cic. OFr 1.13.1 (wodtrixd), 1.5.1 (“de optimo statu civitatis et de optimo cive’), Leg. 1.15 (‘de
optimo rei publicae statu’).

41 Cie. Pis. of, Sest. 55, Prov. Cons. 46 on Clodius’ attitude to the censorship, which was the
corner-stone of Cicero’s ideal Republic (Leg. 111.7, 29); Avs. 1.16.1 and 7, 18.2, 19.8, in Clod. ef Cur.
frr. z20o—4p for Clodius in 61—Go as the embodiment of /ibido.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

FIN DE SIECLE 405

of manumission;!42 men freed their slaves, retained their services, and let
the state feed them. These new citizens swelled still more the four huge
urban tribes in which the freedmen were still confined and their voting
impact deliberately minimized. Feelings ran high, with /ibertas invoked
on one side and the peril of slaves lording it over their masters on the
other.!43

From among the would-be beneficiaries of his law Clodius reconsti-
tuted the organized gangs who had served him so well in 58 and 57. His
enemy Milo, with a body of gladiators, was also well equipped for
violence. Their rivalry, and the continued crisis over the consular
elections, meant that riots and murder persisted throughout the year.!*4
Clodius had been thinking of standing at the delayed elections for the
year 53 itself, but it was not until July or August that Pompey eventually
returned to the city, declined the dictatorship that was offered him, and
made sure the long-delayed elections finally took place (M. Messalla and
Cn. Domitius Calvinus became consuls). By that time too much of the
year had been wasted, so Clodius decided to stand at the elections for 52,
to which the new consuls had immediately to turn their attention.'45 He
carefully preserved his reconciliation with Pompey, and boasted of
Caesar’s support. But his enemies were well able to resist, and amid
continued bribery and violence the year 53 also ended with no magis-
trates elected.!46

Caesar had spent the year restoring Roman control in Belgium after
the onslaught on the winter camps, finding time also for a swift march
south-westwards to frighten the rebellious Senones and Carnutes. His
Commentaries probably now brought the Roman people up to date on the
campaigns of 54 and 53, disguising as best they could the sudden reversal
of fortune after his return from the British expedition. The crisis of the

42 Dio xxxrx.24.1, cf. App. BCiv. 11.120, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.24.5; see Brunt 1971 (A 16)
379~81, and Rickman 1979 (G 212) 174f.

13 Cic. Mil. 33, 87, 89; de aere alieno Milonis frr. 17-18 (‘illam nefariam libertatem’); Asc. 52,
Schol. Bob. 173St (‘opinio erat legem (laturum) in praetura (P. Clodidum (de) servis liberan-
dis>’). See esp. Cic. ap. Quint. Inst. 1x.2.54 and Schol. Bob. 173St: ‘De nostrum omnium — non audeo
totum dicere. Videte quid ea vitii lex habitura fuerit, cuius periculosa etiam reprehensio est.’

14 Ase. 30C: ‘saepe inter se Milo et Clodius cum suis factionibus Romae depugnaverant’.
Clodius: Cic. Mil. 25 (‘Collinam novam dilectu perditissimorum civium conscribebat’), cf. CIL
vi.24627-8 for the likelihood that his agent Sex. Cloelius (Mé/. 33) was in the fribus Collina; de aere
alieno Milonis fr. 13, with Schol. Bob. 172St (‘inmissa seditiosorum manu comitia turbaverat’). Milo:
Schol. Bob. 169 and 171St for Clodius’ allegations. General: Dio xu.45.1; 46.1 (81a rov ex trav ogayav
tdpaxov), 46.3; Asc. 30c, 48c; Cic. Mil. 40, Phil. 11.21 and 49 (attempted murder of Clodius by M.
Antonius, winter 52/1).

145 Dio xx.45.5-46.1, Plut. Pomp. 5 4.2f; Cic. Mil. 24, de aere alieno Milonis ft. 16 (Schol. Bob. 172St),
with Badian 1964 (A z) 150.

1% Dio xx.46, Asc. 30-1C; cf. Vell. Pat. 11.47.3, Cic. de aere aliena Milonis fr. 6p for ambitus. Clodius,

Pompey and Caesar: Cic. Mi/. 66, 88; cf. de aere alieno Milonis ft. 3-4, 9—10P for Cicero’s emphasis on
Clodius’ history of hostility to Pompey.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

406 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

winter camps was told at dramatic length, but the narrative continued to
a climax with Rome’s vengeance on the guilty Eburones; and though
there was no further conquest to report, Caesar had crossed the Rhine
again on a punitive expedition.!47 Pompey was praised as a friend and
patriot (for lending Caesar a legion he had recruited in Cisalpine Gaul in
55) and two of the people’s heroes, the ex-tribunes T. Labienus and C.
Trebonius, were given markedly honorific treatment in the narrative. Q.
Cicero’s heroic defence of his winter camp was generously reported, but
its effect was largely cancelled out by the serious losses his carelessness
caused a few months later when the marauding Sugambri attacked his
camp at Atuatuca. Conscious, no doubt, of his audience, Caesar gave
what credit there could be in that affair to an equestrian officer called C.
Trebonius, no doubt related to his legate of the same name.!48

It was not only the Commentaries that kept the Roman people in mind
of Caesar. For nearly ten years now surveyors, builders and craftsmen
had been at work transforming the public places of the city, as the great
men of Rome strove to dominate the Campus Martius and the Forum
with the visual evidence of their greatness. But now the plundered
wealth of Celtic gods and Gallic chieftains was being poured into the
most ambitious programme of all; Caesar’s agents were out to put all his
rivals architecturally in the shade.149

In the Campus, Pompey’s great theatre-portico complex loomed over
the place where the Roman people elected its magistrates; Caesar
planned a monumental voting-enclosure in marble, surrounded by a
mile-long colonnade.!5° As for the Forum, ambitious young aristocrats
were already at work there. Q. Fabius Maximus, aedile in 57, had
restored his ancestor’s triumphal arch (the entrance to the Forum piazza
from the Via Sacra). L. Paullus, aedile in 56 or 55, was rebuilding one
basilica and had let contracts for a second, even more sumptuous, to
match it on the other side of the piazza.15! Whether he could afford it
remained to be seen. Caesar’s plan to outshine him involved a huge

147 Caes. BGaill. v and vi: v.8-23 (Britain), 24-37 (disaster of Cotta and Sabinus), 38-58
(successful defence of other winter camps); v1.2~5 (Senones and Carnutes), 9-10 (Rhine), 11-28
(digression), 32-5 and 43 (Eburones).

148 Pompey: Caes. BGall. v1.1.4. Labienus: v.8.1, 47.4f, 7-8, vi.7-8, 33. Trebonius: v.17, vi.33
(in charge of three legions). Q. Cicero: v.38-5 2, vI.36—42 (40.4 for C. Trebonius).

149 Cic. Aft. 1V.16.8 (60m HS), Suet. Iu/. 26.2 (100m Hs), 54.2 (plunder). Agents: Q. Oppius (Cic.
Aft. 1v.16.8, OF r 11.1.8); and L. Balbus, who evidently wintered at Rome and left to rejoin Caesar
each April (QFr 111.1.12, Fan. vit.18.3).

180 Pompey: n. 117 above. Saepta and colonnade: Cic. Ass. 1v.16.8 (incorporating also the Villa
Publica, for the census).

151 Fabius: ILLRP 392, Cic. Var. 28 (‘illis viris clarissimis Paullis Maximis Africanis, quorum
gloriam huius virtute renovatam ... iam videmus’). Paullus: Cic. Ass. tv.16.8, a much-misunder-
stood passage (‘Paulus in medio foro basilicam iam paene texerat isdem antiquis columnis. Illam
autem quam locavit facit magnificentissimam. Quid quaeris? Nihil gratius illo monumento, nihil
gloriosius.’)

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

FIN DE SIECLE 407

extension of the Forum area on the north side, now already well under
way. And Caesar may already have been planning his long-term project
of a great theatre overlooking the Forum, built up against the slope of
the Capitol. If only he could carry it out, it would involve the destruction
of the Carcer, scene of the executions of December 63; of L. Opimius’
temple of Concord, that reminder of optimate reaction after the killing of
C. Gracchus; and perhaps also of the Basilica Porcia, Cato’s ancestral
monument. All these were symbols of oppression to Clodius and his
popular following, as was the senate-house itself, which bore the hated
name of Sulla. But Caesar’s benefactions stretched beyond Rome, to
Italian communities and to cities and dynasts abroad, causing yet more
alarm among his opponents.!52

The new year opened with an interregnum, patrician senators being
nominated for successive five-day periods until elections could be held.
The fourth interrex had completed the third day of his office when
Clodius’ body was brought to Rome at dusk. He had met Milo on the Via
Appia near Bovillae; wounded by one of the gladiators in Milo’s escort,
he was carried into a wayside tavern, then dragged out and finished off at
Milo’s order.

A huge crowd gathered round Clodius’ house, where the blood-
stained corpse lay naked in the afrium. Distraught, his widow pointed
out the wounds. She was a Fulvia, whose name recalled the Fulvii Flacci,
father and sons, martyrs to the popular cause sixty-nine years before
(though she may not have been of the same family). Next day at first light
the crowd reassembled, this time with two tribunes to direct its anger.
They ordered the body to be carried, as it was, down the Via Sacra,
across the Forum to the rostra. That was where the funeral procession of
a great man would halt, for a relative to deliver the oratio funebris.
Clodius’ brothers were away in their provinces; his son was a mere
infant. So the tribunes spoke instead, and their harangues over the torn
flesh of the people’s hero turned the crowd’s inarticulate grief into rage
against Milo and his senatorial friends.!53

Sex. Cloelius, Clodius’ secretary and faithful lieutenant, was in charge
of this ad hoc funeral. It was he who ordered the pyre to be built inside the
senate-house itself. Benches, tables, tribunals were broken up; the body

152 Forum extension: Cic. Aff. 1v.16.8. Theatre: Suet. Iu/. 44.1 (‘theatrum summae magnitudinis
Tarpeio monti accubans’), not to be confused with the Caesarian project later completed as the
Theatre of Marcellus (Dio xi111.49.2). Concordia: Plut. C. Gracch. 17.6. Senate-house: Cic. Fin. v.2
(dramatic date 79 B.c.), Pliny HN xxxtv.26, Dio xu.q9.3. For the topographical data see Coarelli
1985 (B 277) 11 80-7 (saxum Tarpeium), ibid. 45, 59-67, 148f (Basilica Porcia and Carcer). Benefactions
elsewhere: Suet. Ix/. 28.1.

193, Asc. 31-33 (35c for Clodius’ son); the tribunes were Q. Pompeius Rufus and T. Munatius
Plancus. Cf. Polyb. v1.53 for the oratio funebris, Ap. Claudius (cos. 54) was in Cilicia, C. Claudius (pr.

56) probably not yet home from Asia. For the Fulvii Flacci killed in 121, cf. Cic. Cat. 1.4, Phil.
vint.1g, Sall. Iug. 16.2, Plut. C. Gracch. 16.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

408 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

was duly placed on the pyre and the torch applied. The whole building
went up in flames, and that evening the funeral feast for Clodius was held
in the Forum by the smouldering remains of Sulla’s senate-house and the
adjoining Basilica Porcia.'54

V. THE RECONQUEST OF GAUL

For the first time in nearly two years, in early 52 Caesar was in his
Cisalpine province. The revolts had delayed his triumphant return to
Rome, but now that he had stamped them out with proper severity
(Acco, the rebellious leader of the Senones, had been flogged to death),
Caesar could look forward, after a year or two organizing the new
province on a permanent basis, to a glorious triumph, a second
consulship, and a place of honour in Roman politics that would eclipse
even that of Pompey. The point at which his command would formally
run out is notoriously a matter of dispute (1 March 50 or 49? or another
date?). As things developed, perhaps it did not matter very much. If he
chose to leave his consular candidature for two years, he could have
Clodius as his consular colleague.'55 But he could not afford to take any
chances. What he needed was a dispensation allowing him to stand for
election in absence, and thus to pass straight from his triumph to the
consulship, like Marius in 104 and Pompey in 70, without any lapse of
imperium which would let his enemies destroy him in the courts as they
had destroyed Gabinius. He could rely on the assembly to give him this
dispensation. But would it be vetoed?

One of the tribunes of 52 was M. Caelius, an able and dangerous
young man at present committed to the optimate cause. Caelius was a
protégé of Cicero’s, and Cicero had come to Ravenna with serious
matters to discuss. If he wanted anything from Caesar, he must guarantee
Caelius’ acquiescence.!5¢ Caesar also had to talk to the agents of Pompey,
about marriages. Pompey had a newly marriageable daughter, whom he
had betrothed to Faustus Sulla (no friend to Caesar); Caesar was willing
to divorce his own wife and marry her, and Pompey could have his great-
niece Octavia (at present married to C. Marcellus).!57

While these discussions were going on, news came from Rome. First,
that Clodius was murdered and the populace was out of hand; Cicero

154 Cic. Mil. 33, 90; Asc. 33, 42C; Dio xt.49.3; for Sex. Cloelius see nn. 40, 41, 81 above.

155 Caelius in Cic. Fam. vitt.8.9 (with Gruen 1974 (c 209) 476) for the option of a candidacy in 50
for 49; cf. n. 124 above for his earlier hopes. Acco: Caes. BGall. v1.44.2, cf. Suet. Nero 49.2 on
‘supplicium more maiorum’.

186 Cic. Att. vit.1.4, ef. Cael. 77f for Caelius’ politics; Cicero was no doubt still interested in a
consulship for Quintus (n. 124 above) or a censorship for himself (cic. Ass. 1v.2.6, October 57).

187 Suet. Iu/. 27.1 (cf. 50.1 — Caesar had known Pompeia’s mother in the old days); 26.1 for his
announcement of a forthcoming banquet and gladiatorial show to remind the populace of Julia.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE RECONQUEST OF GAUL 409

could count himself lucky he was not in the city. Then, that the Senate
had passed the emergency decree, entrusting the safety of Rome — since
consular elections were still impossible — to ‘the snterrex, the tribunes of
the people, and Cn. Pompeius’ (who was a pro-magistrate by virtue of
the proconsular authority granted him in 55). The Senate had also
ordered levies of troops to be held throughout Italy (Caesar immediately
began recruiting in Cisalpine Gaul), and assigned to Sulla’s son Faustus
the rebuilding of Sulla’s senate-house.158 Pompey was making no secret
of the fact that the armed militia he was organizing was for protection
against Milo, who, he alleged, was planning to kill him too. Milo was
back in Rome, supported by Caelius; of the other tribunes, Q. Pompeius
Rufus, T. Munatius Plancus and C. Sallustius Crispus (later the histor-
ian) were holding public meetings every day to keep popular indignation
on the boil. Predictably, the call was renewed for Pompey to be made
dictator. The tribunes preferred that he should be elected consul — with
Caesar as his colleague.'5?

News of these events went equally quickly to Gaul. Already alarmed
at the fate of Acco, the tribal chiefs conferred in secret and resolved to
seize their opportunity. Caesar was safely preoccupied in Italy; his
legions were in winter camp far to the north; the winter snows made the
Cevennes impassable. The Carnutes moved first, overwhelming Caesar’s
supply base at Cenabum (Orléans). Then the Arverni in the Massif
Central, under the leadership of an energetic young noble called
Vercingetorix, quickly organized an anti-Roman alliance of all the Gallic
peoples between the Loire and the Garonne. Even the Aedui, Rome’s
most trusted allies, could not be relied on.!©

Receiving urgent reports from his legates, Caesar hurried northwards
from Ravenna. On the way he got still worse news: one of Vercingetorix’
lieutenants had won over the peoples on the border of Gallia Narbonen-
sis, and a hostile force was threatening Narbo itself. Postponing the
problem of reaching his legions, Caesar went directly to Narbo to
organize the defence of the province. Then he made straight for the heart
of the revolt, digging his way through the snowdrifts of the Cevennes to
appear unexpectedly in Arvernian territory. With only a small force, it
was a very dangerous gamble. Vercingetorix, whose main army was 150
kilometres to the north in the territory of the Bituriges, marched south.

158 Asc. 33-4, Dio xx.49. 3-30.2, Caes. BGall. vit.1.1. Mob violence: Asc. 43c, App. BCiv. 11.22
(random killings of prosperous citizens). Cicero: first attested at Rome in the intercalary month after
23 Feb. (Asc. 34c); for the crowd’s hostility, exacerbated by the tribunes, see Cic. Mi/. 47, Asc, 37~8
and 49~50C.

1599 Suet. Iu/. 26.1, Dio xt.30.3. Milo and Pompey: Asc. 50-2¢, cf. 36-8c (slightly later); Pompey
had preferred other candidates for the consular elections.

160 Caes. BGall. vit.1—5, cf. 8.2f for the snow; v1.44.3 for the winter camps (six legions at
Agedincum on the Yonne, two in the Ardennes, two in the Plateau de Langres).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

410 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

Caesar, pretending to be leaving his camp for only two or three days in
search of reinforcements, astonished his escort by heading east, over the
mountains again, straight to Vienne in the Rhone valley. From there,
with new forces of cavalry, he went north up the valley of the Sadne as
fast as he could, making for his nearest two legions before Vercingetorix
could hear of his ruse, and before the Aedui, whose territory he had to
pass, could make up their minds to kill him.!6

Probably before he left Italy Caesar had known that Pompey had been
elected sole consul. That constitutional novelty had been proposed in the
Senate by M. Bibulus, with the active support of Cato, who said any
government was better than none. Pompey had immediately introduced
emergency legislation to bring to justice those responsible for the
scandalous bribery and violence of the past few months. The consular
‘investigator’ elected to preside over the trials de vi was L. Domitius
Ahenobarbus.!62 Pompey had restored order, but it was Caesar’s enemies
who would benefit from this new and fateful alliance. Pompey had
perhaps already rearranged his matrimonial plans; his bride was to be not
Caesar’s great-niece but Cornelia, the young widow of P. Crassus who
had died at Carrhae. Her highly aristocratic father, Q. Metellus Scipio,
had been one of Milo’s rivals for the consulship, and was now under
prosecution for his part in the violence of the previous winter. Pompey
used his influence, and the case was dropped. Not only that, but in July
Pompey was to get his new father-in-law elected to the vacant consulship
as his colleague.!63

For the moment, Caesar’s enemies were disappointed in their hopes of
hearing of his defeat. He managed to reach his army safely, and brought
all his legions together at Agedincum. That news turned Vercingetorix
north again. It was still winter, and Caesar had no reliable source of
supplies. But he could not simply sit and wait, leaving the initiative with
Vercingetorix. He led out eight of the ten legions, sacked and plundered
Cenabum in vengeance for the Roman citizens who had been killed
there, received the surrender of two other strongholds, and headed
south to Avaricum (Bourges).

The land of the Bituriges had been devastated. So great was Vercinge-
torix’ authority that he had persuaded his allies to burn their own crops,
even their villages, in order to starve the Romans of supplies. Only
Avaricum, spared against his better judgement, would be defended, and
Vercingetorix encamped his main force not far from the town. Caesar
made as if to attack his camp, but thought better of it and concentrated
on the siege. It was long and bitterly resisted, but in the end the hungry

161 Caes. BGall. vit.7—-9 (cf. 65.1 for the Narbo defences).

162 Asc. 36, 38c; Dio xL.50.4f, Plut. Pomp. 54.4, Cat. Min. 47.3, App. BCiv. 11.23.
63 Asc. 30-1C, Plut. Pomp. 55, App. BCiv. 11.24f, Dio xx.51.2f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE RECONQUEST OF GAUL 4It

legions were able to storm the wall. All inside were massacred, men,
women and children.

The capture of Avaricum solved Caesar’s immediate problem of
supplies, but he was as far away as ever from defeating Vercingetorix,
whose losses were more than made up by the winning of new allies. All
over Gaul, from the Nitiobriges on the Garonne to the Bellovaci on the
Oise, his agents found willing listeners. Caesar now divided his forces,
sending Labienus north with four legions to the Senones and Parisii
while he himself marched south with the other four into Arvernian
territory. Both campaigns came to nothing. Labienus brilliantly extri-
cated his army from an unexpectedly dangerous situation on the Seine,
but Caesar gambled on a surprise attack against Gergovia (near Cler-
mont-Ferrand) and failed, with the loss of 46 centurions and 7oo men.
Worse still, the Aedui now came out openly for Vercingetorix, and
sacked Caesar’s supply base at Noviodunum (Nevers). By desperate
forced marches and a hazardous crossing of the Loire, swollen with the
winter snows, Caesar managed to get back to the vicinity of Agedincum
and link up again with Labienus. His army was reunited, but it was on
the defensive, and cut off from the Narbonese province by a solid band of
hostile territory from the Bay of Biscay to the Sadne.'64

Vercingetorix took full advantage of the situation. He organized
concerted attacks on the whole frontier of Narbonensis, concentrating
particularly on the Allobroges, who had rebelled against Rome only ten
years before. Caesar would have to march east as well as south, through
the territory of the Sequani into that of the Allobroges, if he were to
come to the help of the province, and Vercingetorix massed his cavalry
forces to stop him. With confident enthusiasm, the Gauls made ready to
inflict on Caesar’s army the most humiliating defeat.!65

The news no doubt travelled fast from the nervous colonists of Narbo
to the eager gossips of Rome. Caesar’s enemies were jubilant. The trials
under Pompey’s emergency legislation had gone very well. They had
suffered only one loss — Milo himself, who could hardly have been
successfully defended even if his counsel (Cicero) had stood up better
than he did to the extreme hostility of the Forum crowd.!66 On the other
hand, Sex. Cloelius and other Clodian supporters were condemned. The
indices were men of property: their fear of the populace, and the
comforting presence of Pompey’s troops, enabled the senatorial
conservatives to recover political control. One sign of the times was the

164 Caes. BGall. vit.10-62. See especially 43.5 (‘ne profectio [from Gergovia] nata ab timore
defectionis similis fugae videretur’); 55.9, 56.2, 59.1 (expectation that Caesar would withdraw into
Narbonensis).

165 Caes. BGall. v1.63—6. Vercingetorix’ speech is of course Caesar’s invention of ra Séovra.

166 Asc. 40-2, 53-4C; cf. Vell. Pat. 1.47.4 on Cato’s vote for acquittal.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

412 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

election of Cicero to the augurship he had long coveted.!*? And now,
once again, it seemed that Caesar was finished.

But once again they underestimated him. The defence force Caesar
had organized at Narbo in the winter was able to hold off the attacks on
the province. And though cut off from reinforcements to the south, he
had sent for cavalry from the German tribes across the Rhine, and these
were enough to foil Vercingetorix when he launched his onslaught
against Caesar’s line of march. The Gallic cavalry was defeated; Verc-
ingetorix withdrew the rest of his forces to the stronghold of Alesia in
the territory of the Mandubii to the west. Caesar followed, and began
preparations for a siege.

Before the Roman siege-works closed around him, Vercingetorix sent
out his cavalry with urgent messages to all his allies, asking for a massive
relief army from the whole of Gaul. Caesar therefore had to construct
two great lines of fortified earthworks — the inner one, seventeen
kilometres round, to blockade the fortress itself, the outer one, twenty-
two kilometres, to defend the besiegers from the relieving army. He was
thus between two huge forces of infantry, inferior in quality to his own
but terrifying in sheer weight of numbers: supposedly 80,000 within the
siege-works and 240,000 outside. The deciding battle would have to be
fought by the legionaries, defending their fortifications against a
simultaneous onslaught from both sides.1%

In Rome, therefore, the news from Gaul was still discouraging for
Caesar’s friends. While he was trapped at Alesia, the Ilyrians were
raiding the other end of his province; Tergeste, perilously close to the
Roman colony of Aquileia, had actually been sacked.!69

When the attack at Alesia finally came, despite fierce fighting all round
the fortifications, the Gallic army was unable to break through, and
eventually turned in flight. Those inside the fortress saw their last chance
gone, and surrendered. Vercingetorix’ dignified appeal for pardon was
rejected; he was put in chains to await Caesar’s triumph.!70

The Senate voted a public thanksgiving of twenty days ~— the third
time this honour had been given to Caesar’s victories — and the whole
college of tribunes (Caelius included) put to the people a bill giving
Caesar permission to stand for the consulship in absence. Cato strongly
resisted, but Pompey’s support overbore the opposition. In spite of this
divergence of attitude to Caesar, Pompey had asked Cato to be one of his

167 Trials: Asc. 54—6c, ps. Sall. epist. Caes. 11.3.3, 4.2. Cicero (see n. 26 above): Cic. Fan. xv.4.13,
Phil. 11.4 (‘me augurem a toto collegio expetitum Cn. Pompeius et Q. Hortensius nominaverunt’),
for the date, see Linderski 1972 (c 220) 190-9.

168 Caes. BGa//. vit.67-82. Numbers: 71.3, 76.3, 77-8. Contribution of Germans: 67.5, 70.2-7,
80.6.

169 Hirtius BGa//. viti.24.3: pethaps the first incursion into Cisalpine Gaul since the defeat of the
Cimbri. 170 Caes. BGall. vit.83—9, Dio xv.41.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE RECONQUEST OF GAUL 413

personal advisers; but Cato said he could advise only for the advantage of
the state, not that of any individual.!7!

A further law about magistracies, requiring professio in person,
obscured the legal situation; after it had been passed Pompey added a
note about Caesar’s exemption, which could of course have no legal
validity.!72 Disingenuous as he often was, Pompey was not necessarily
being Machiavellian here; he may not yet have envisaged a break with
Caesar, in spite of his new associates.

Cato was a candidate for the consulship of 51, and openly announced
his intention of getting Caesar recalled and put on trial. But he failed; in
an election conspicuously free from bribery, the successful candidates
were M. Marcellus, a formidable orator and no friend of Caesar, and the
learned jurist Ser. Sulpicius Rufus. Sulpicius had first tried for the
consulship in 63; he was an honest man, hostile to political corruption
and perhaps not unsympathetic to the kind of reform Clodius had been
urging, though not to Clodius himself. He may have been assisting
Pompey’s reforming legislation in 5 2, and inspired his abortive plan for a
codification of the law.'73 Sulpicius’ election, and the conduct of the poll
itself, showed how effective Pompey had been as the ‘physician of the
state’, restoring moral health to the body politic. His colleague Scipio
now did his part, introducing legislation to restore the full authority of
the censors, restricted by Clodius in 58. Censors would be elected in
about eighteen months, and a /ustrum would confirm Pompey’s political
settlement as it had done twenty years before.'!”4

Of the turbulent consular candidates of the previous two years, those
who had not been elected were now in exile.'75 And to prevent such
scandals happening again, Pompey had put into law a reform proposed
by the Senate a year earlier; after the tenure of praetorship or consulship,
five years must elapse — plenty of time for a bribery prosecution — before
the ex-magistrate could go to his province. That was the only hope of
breaking the nexus of corruption between ambition for office and
provincial extortion.!76 However, it was legislation which Pompey did
not consider applicable to himself; for another bill granted him an
immediate new five-year command in Spain, with the right to remain

"" Caes. BCiv. 1.32.3, Cic. Fam. v1.6.5, Aft. vit.1.4, 3.4 (see n. 156 above). Supplicatio: Caes.
BGall. vit.90.8 (see 1.35.4, 1V.38.5). Cato: Plut. Cat. Min. 48.2.

1722 Dio. xx.56.3; Suet. Caes. 28.3.

3 Plut. Cat. Min. 49-50, Dio x.58. Sulpicius: Cic. Mur. 47, see p. 353 above; Bauman 1985 (F
179). Codification: Isidore Esym. 5.1.5.

4 Dio xv.57.1. Pompey: Tac. Asn. 111.28 (‘corrigendis moribus’), Cic. Mi/. 68 (sanare), Plut.
Pomp. 55.3 (farpés), App. BCiv. 11.28 (epareéa).

175 54-53: elected, M. Messalla and Cn. Domitius Calvinus; condemned, C. Memmius and M.
Scaurus (App. BCiv. 11.24). 53-52: elected, Q. Metellus Scipio; condemned, T. Milo and P. Plautius
Hypsaeus (Val. Max. 1x.5.3 for Pompey’s studied impartiality).

1% Dio xx.56.1, cf. 30.1, 46.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

414 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

himself near Rome in command of troops.'77 Finally, when the tribunes
went out of office in December, the two who had led the popular
uprising after Clodius’ death were prosecuted and condemned. For
many reasons, the author of De Republica was delighted with Pompey’s
third consulship.'78

Caesar’s weary legions were recovering in widely scattered winter
camps, distributed — from Belgium to the borders of Narbonensis — in
the hope of discouraging further revolts. Caesar himself was at Bibracte,
and it is a reasonable guess that he spent the autumn months composing
his long and brilliant account of the campaign against Vercingetorix.
With its emphasis on ‘the majesty of the Roman people’ and the
vengeance called for by the deaths of equestrian negotiatores (at Cenabum
and elsewhere), his vivid narrative of strategy and heroism was surely
aimed at the voters of Rome and Italy. Moreover, Labienus featured
even more prominently than before; we may suspect that he was being
presented as Caesar’s prospective consular colleague.'79 But for which
year? The war was not over yet, and Caesar would have to move very fast
if he hoped to offer himself and his lieutenant for election in 51.

On the last day of December he took the field again, to intimidate first
the Bituriges and then the Carnutes. Dividing the: labour carefully
among the different legions, he then marched north against the Bello-
vaci, who had declined to commit themselves to Vercingetorix on the
grounds that ‘they would not take orders from anyone, but would wage
war with the Romans on their own account and in their own way’.
Which they now did, to good effect. Caesar was disconcerted by the
strength of their forces, and sent for three more legions to reinforce the
four he had with him. Even so, he was faced with a hard campaign. !80
There would be no consular candidature this year.

Late in May, M. Caelius wrote from Rome to Cicero, who was on his
way to Cilicia (Pompey’s five-year rule made it necessary for ex-
magistrates who had never held a province to be deployed):

As regards Caesar, rumours arrive in plenty about him ... One says he has lost
his cavalry (which I think is certainly a fabrication), another that the Seventh
Legion has taken a beating and that Caesar himself is under siege in the country
of the Bellovaci, cut off from the rest of his army. But nothing is confirmed as
yet, and even these unconfirmed reports are not bandied about generally but

17 Plut. Pomp. 55.7, Dio x.56.2.

178 Cic. Aft. vii.1.4 (‘in illo divino tertio consulatu’); Fam. vit.2.2f for his satisfaction at T.
Plancus’ condemnation. The other condemned tribune was Q. Pompeius Rufus, ‘qui fuerat
familiarissimus omnium P. Clodio’ (Asc. 50c); M. Caelius was the prosecutor (Val. Max. Iv.2.7, Dio
XL.§ 5.1).

179 Caes. BGal//. vi1.17.3 (‘populi Romani maiestas’); 3.1, 17.7, 28.4, 38.9, 42.3 (citizen deaths);
19.4f (Caesar’s concern to minimize casualties); 56-62, 86-7 (Labienus).

1890 Hirtius BGa//. vitt.2—16; cf. v11.75.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE RECONQUEST OF GAUL 41§

retailed as an open secret among a smail coterie — you know who. But Domitius
{Ahenobarbus] claps hand to mouth before he speaks.

Caesar’s ill-wishers also included the consul M. Marcellus, who had
announced that he would raise in the Senate the question of Caesar’s
supersession. That caused a frisson of fear throughout Italy. Would there
bea civil war? Marcellus’ colleague Sulpicius urged the Senate to take the
danger seriously and opposed the plan on legal grounds. Meanwhile,
what would Pompey do? Pompey was in Tarentum, and the debate on
Marcellus’ motion would have to wait till he returned to Rome.!81

Having finally mastered the Bellovaci, Caesar sent one of his legions
back over the Alps into Cisalpina, ostensibly to protect the communities
there against the sort of attack Tergeste had suffered the previous year.
Marcellus, meanwhile, had raised the political temperature by ordering
the flogging of a Transpadane, a decurion at the colony Caesar had
founded at Novum Comum under the Lex Vatinia. Since Roman citizens
could not legally be flogged, his act called into question the validity of
Vatinius’ law, and thus of Caesar’s command. Pompey, as hereditary
patron of the Transpadani, was expected to be no less angry than Caesar
himself. Still choosing not to visit his province, Pompey went to inspect
his troops at Ariminum, close to the boundary of Cisalpine Gaul.182

If he wanted to confer with Caesar, he was disappointed. Caesar was
laying waste the lands of the Eburones, effectively wiping out the people
who had started the cycle of rebellions by the attack on the winter camps
in 54-53. And even that brutal vengeance did not finish the war. The
legate C. Caninius Rebilus, in putting down a serious rising among the
Pictones, had removed the protection of his legions from the boundaries
of Narbonensis. Two bold Gallic leaders had taken advantage of the
situation to renew the previous year’s threat against the old Roman
province. Caninius had pursued them south, but they were now defying
him in the fortress of Uxellodunum in the Dordogne. Returning from
Belgium with mainly diplomacy on his mind, Caesar found another
military crisis that demanded his presence. 183

In Rome, elections had taken place. Young Curio, who had been so
outspoken against the three allies in Caesar’s consulship, would be one of
the tribunes in 50. The consuls would be C. Marcellus, cousin of Caesar’s
enemy, and L. Aemilius Paullus. The former was related to Caesar by
marriage, the latter owed him a very great favour: Caesar had provided
Paullus with the huge sum of 1,500 talents (9 million denarii) to enable

181 Caelius in Cic. Fam. viut.t.2, 1.4 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110)); Cic. Aft. v.3.1 (‘in
oppidis enim summum video timorem’), Fam. 1v.3.1 (Sulpicius); Att. v.7 (Pompey prepared ‘ad
haec quae timentur propulsanda’), cf. Fam. 11.8.2. Tarentum: Aft. v.5.2, 6.1.

1@ Hirtius BGa//. vint.17—24; Suet. Iu/. 28.3, Plut. Caes. 29.2, Cic. Aft. v.11.2 (‘non minus
stomachi nostro (quam) Caesari’); Caelius in Cic. Fam. vutt.4.4, Cic. Att. v.19.1 (Ariminum).

18 Hirtius BGa//. viit.24—-39, and vu.7 for Lucterius in 53.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

416 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

him to complete the rebuilt basilica in the Roman Forum.'!84 Caesar had
bound other men to him by loans (Cicero among them). If Curio could
be won over, and Pompey stayed loyal, there was a good chance that
Caesar would be able to use the ‘law of the ten tribunes’ in a year’s time,
and go straight from his proconsular army to the consulship. But first he
had to stamp out Gallic resistance once and for all.

Caesar hurried to Uxellodunum to take personal charge of the siege, at
which a force equivalent to nearly seven legions was now deployed.
Eventually, by tunnelling to divert the spring that provided the fortress’
water supply, he forced its surrender. Exemplary punishment was
inflicted, as a message to the rest of Gaul. Those who had borne arms
were allowed to live, with their hands cut off.

With that calculated atrocity Caesar achieved his aim. Gaul was
cowed. When Labienus, operating in the far north-east, inflicted a heavy
defeat on the Treveri and their German allies, it was the last campaign of
the war. After a quick detour into Aquitania, which he had not yet
visited in person, Caesar proceeded to Narbo to carry out his judicial
duties and receive the congratulations of a grateful province. Then,
distributing his legions strategically round the whole country, he rode
north to winter in Belgium.'!85

Throughout the year, whether through incompetence or because of
Pompey’s continued absence, M. Marcellus had kept postponing his
threatened senatorial debate on the Gallic provinces. It was finally held at
the end of September, in the temple of Apollo, outside the pomoerium so
that Pompey could attend. By then it had become clear that Pompey was
in favour of new proconsuls being allotted to the Gallic provinces the
following spring, and thus of Caesar giving up his army and command
before the consular elections in the summer of 50. And that was what the
patres decided; the consuls of 50 were to bring the matter to the Senate on
_1 March. 186

Caelius reported to Cicero:

Certain remarks of Cn. Pompeius have been noted, and have greatly raised
public confidence. He said that before the Kalends of March he could not in
fairness take a decision about Caesar’s provinces, but that after this date he
would have no hesitation. Asked what would be the position if vetoes were cast
at that point, he said that it made no difference whether C. Caesar was going to

1% Curio: Caelius in Cic. Fam. vitt.4.2, 10.3; cf. Cic. Aft. 1.18.1, 19.3 (59). Marcellus: Suet. Iai.
27.1 (married to Octavia, niece of Caesar’s sister). Paullus: Plut. Caes. 29.3, Pomp. 58.1, App. BCw.
11.26, The other basilica (‘illa quam locavit’, n. 151 above) became in due course the Basilica lulia,
though whether Caesar took it over before 49 is not known.

18 Hirtius BGal/. vitt.q4o—7; for the overall strategy, see 1.2f, 24.1, 39.2, 44.1, 49.2.

18 Caelius in Cic. Fam. vitt.1.2 (May), 4.4 (July), 9.2 (September), cf. 10.3 on Marcellus’
incompetence. Pompey’s view: ibid. 9.5, 8.4; 1 March had been suggested by Metellus Scipio against
the wishes of Caesar’s agent L. Balbus.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE FINAL CRISIS 417

disobey the Senate or was putting up someone to prevent the Senate from
passing a decree. ‘And supposing’, said another questioner, ‘he chooses to be
consul and keep his army?’ To which Pompeius, as gently as you please: ‘And
supposing my son chooses to take his stick to me?’ These utterances of his have
produced an impression that Pompeius is having trouble with Caesar.!87

VI. THE FINAL CRISIS

Early in September 51, a large Parthian force under the command of
King Orodes’ son Pacorus crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma. Since
Carrhae, Rome had neglected the eastern frontier. Syria was still held by
Crassus’ quaestor C. Cassius with the re-formed survivors of Crassus’
army; in Cilicia there were just two under-strength legions; the local
populations were ill disposed to Roman rule, and now both provinces
had been given to reluctant ex-consuls: Cicero had just arrived in Cilicia,
Bibulus was still on his way to Syria.!88

The first reports reached Rome by mid-November, and caused intense
political speculation:

One man is for sending Pompeius out, another says Pompeius ought not to be
moved away from Rome. Another school of thought would like to send Caesar
with his army, another the consuls.!8°

Pompey was the obvious choice. Pompey himself thought so. ‘The
Parthians’, he wrote reassuringly to Cicero, ‘are my business.’ Cassius,
who did not want to share glory with anyone, sent a series of boastful
despatches after successfully defending Antioch, but Cicero’s reports
(and no doubt those of Bibulus, when he arrived) were much less
sanguine. The Parthians were wintering in ‘Cyrrhestike, west of the
Euphrates, and would certainly renew their attack in the next campaign-
ing season,!%

Meanwhile, the new tribunes were about to enter office. Attention was
focused on the ambitious Curio, the darling of the urban plebs since his
spectacular games, and now married to Clodius’ widow. But he was
thought to be hostile to Caesar, and it was confidently expected that if
anyone vetoed Caesar’s supersession on 1 March, Curio would counter-

187 In Cic. Fam. vit.8.9 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110): ‘negotium’ meaning ‘trouble’).

188 Cic. Fam. xv.3 (to Cato, 3 Sept.), 1 (dispatch to Senate, 18 Sept.), Aft. v.18.1-2 (20 Sept.); cf.
Att.v.15.1 (Cilicia legions), Dio xu.28.1 (Cassius), 28.4 (disaffection), 30.1 (Lex Pompeia); there was
also fear of an Armenian invasion of Cappadocia (Cic. Fam. xv.3.1). For Cicero’s operations in
Cilicia see Sherwin-White 1984 (D 291) 290-7.

189 Caelius in Cic. Fav. vitt.10.2 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110)). When Caelius wrote on
17 November, only Cassius and Deiotarus had been heard from, though Cicero had written on 18
September (Fam. xv.r), and the king of Commagene even earlier (Fam. xv.3.2); forty-six days was
reckoned a fast time for a letter from Rome to Cilicia (Aét. v.19.1).

19 Cic. Alt. v.21.2, Vi.1.14, Fam. 1.10.2, Dio xt.28-9. Bibulus arrived in October (A/?. v.20.4).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

418 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

attack by blocking all provincial allocations.!9! Probably he was hoping
to buy conservative acquiescence in the programme of popular legisla-
tion he intended to introduce.

His first proposal was a land law. He intended to find land by the
dispossession of King Juba of Numidia; he also wanted to use the ager
Campanus for distribution, no doubt by buying out the existing owners;
it may have been for this reason that he was hoping to raise revenue by a
tax on slave-owners.!92 In January and February, however, it became
clear that he would get nowhere by gentlemanly means. The new
consuls, L. Paullus and C. Marcellus, effectively paralysed all political
activity, and when the pontifices refused to permit the intercalary month
(which would have righted the calendar but also given him time for his
legislation before the Gallic issue came up on 1 March), Curio abruptly
changed his tactics. He brought in two new bills — a Gracchan one about
road-building, and a Clodian one about corn distribution — and declared
himself an unambiguous popu/aris by supporting Caesar’s case in his
speeches to the people.!%

It was later alleged, and it may well be true, that Caesar had bought
Curio’s allegiance with a huge financial subsidy to pay his debts.
Certainly the bill about the ager Campanus could have been helpful to
Caesar’s veterans, and the road bill offered a five-year commission which,
failing the Parthian command, might conceivably be used to extend
Caesar’s immunity when he eventually laid down the proconsulship of
Gaul.!%

When 1 March came, L. Paullus was the presiding consul. He
evidently deferred discussion, no doubt with Curio’s approval, and gave

11 Caelius in Cic. Fam. viit.s.2f, cf. Cic. Att. v1.2.6. For Curio’s attitude in general, cf. Caelius in
Cic. Fan. virt.4.2 (August, ‘ut spero et volo et ut se fert ipse, bonos et senatum malet’), Cic. Fan.
1.7, Vi.32.3. Hostility to Caesar: Caelius in Cic. Fam. v1it.8.10 (Sept.) and 10.3 (Nov.). Popularity:
Dio xx.60.2, App. BCiv. 11.26; cf. Pliny HN xxxvi.116—20, Cic. Fam. 11.3 for the games (late 5 3 or
gz). Fulvia: Cie. PAi/. u.11, 113.

192 Caes. BCiv. 1.25.4, Dio xi1.41.3 (Juba); Caelius in Cic. Faw. vitt.10.4 (ager Campanus), cf. Cic.
Leg. Agr. 1.14f, 11.67 (63), Dio xxxviti.t.4 (59), with Brunt 1971 (A 16) 316f; Cic. Aff. vi.1.25, with
Lacey 1961 (c 216) 323 n. 67, for the slave tax — not, pace Shackleton Bailey 1977 (8 110), part of the
later /ex viaria.

193 Caelius in Cic. Fam. vi11.6.5 (‘transfugit ad populum et pro Caesare loqui coepit’). Lex viaria:
App. BCiv. 11.27, cf. Plut. C. Gracch. 6.3-7.2; the last Roman road to be built had been the Via
Aemilia (Scauri) in 115-109 (Vir. Idi. 72.7, with Fentress 1984 (B 151). The /ex alimentaria would
have entrusted the corn distribution to the aediles: Sex. Cloelius had done it under the Lex Clodia
(Cic. Dom. 25) and Pompey in 57-56 (Dio xxxix.24.1f, ef. Cic. OF r 1.3.2); but what happened after
Pompey’s cura annonae lapsed? There was a real need for these reforms, as there was for the proposal
de aquis urged by Caelius as aedile (Frontin. Ag. 76); the last aqueduct built had been the Aqua
Tepula in 125.

1% Caelius in Cic. Fam. viit.10.4 (‘negant Caesarem laborare’), 6.5 (like Rullus’ bill). Bribe: Vell.
Pat. 11.48.3f, Val. Max. 1x.1.6, Suet. Iu/, 29.1; no contemporary comment, but see Cic. Aft. v1.3.4
(huc enim odiosa adferebantur de Curione, de Paulo’).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE FINAL CRISIS 419

no support when his colleague raised the matter the following month.'%
Caelius reported:

As things stand so far Pompeius seems to be putting his weight along with the
Senate in demanding that Caesar leave his province on the Ides of November.
Curio is resolved to let that happen only over his dead body, and has given up
the rest of his programme ... [Pompeius] regards the idea of Caesar being
elected consul before he hands over his province and army with strong
disfavour ...

Pompey’s suggestion that Caesar should resign his command in mid-
November, only forty-six days short of the start of the consular year, was
a concession, but it was not enough. There would still be time for the
jurors Pompey had hand-picked in 52 to find Caesar guilty of vis or
ambitus for offences committed before he left for Gaul, or perhaps for
extortion or mazestas when there.!% Curio, in a series of stormy meetings,
urged that if Caesar were to give up his Gallic command, Pompey should
also give up his absentee proconsulship of Spain, which still had three
years to run.!9?

The only issue on which agreement was possible was the Parthian
crisis. The Senate decreed that Pompey and Caesar should give up one
legion each to reinforce Syria. Pompey named the legion he had ‘lent’ to
Caesar in 53.198

Caesar himself had decided not to seek the consulship in 50. But he
came south into Cisalpine Gaul at the time of the elections, to hear that
Antony his ex-quaestor had defeated L. Ahenobarbus for the vacancy in
the college of augurs caused by the recent death of Hortensius. On the
other hand, his ex-legate Ser. Galba had been kept out of the consulship
by two men who were likely to be hostile, L. Lentulus Crus and another
C. Marcellus, brother of the consul of 51.199

Censors too had been elected; Appius Claudius, and Caesar’s father-
in-law L. Piso. Cicero urged Appius to remember his great ancestor the
censor Appius Caecus; despite his own experience of his arrogance and
corruption, Cicero claimed to have hopes that Appius might prove to be

195 Caelius in Cic. Fam. vitt.11.1 (with Shackleton Bailey ad /oc.), App. BCiv. 11.27.

1% Caelius in Cic. Fam. vint.11.3 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110)). Jurors: Cic. Aft.
virr.16.2, Vell. Pat. 1.76.1, Dio xu.5 2.1; cf. Caelius in Cic. Fam. vitt.1.4, App. BCiv. 11.25, ef. 1.1.4
for Caesar’s sympathy with those condemned in 52; Caes. BCiv. 1.4.3 (potentes dominating tudicia),
Suet. Iu/. 30.4 (‘condemnatus essem’).

197 Cic. Fam. 1.12.1 (‘tumultuosae contiones’); Hirtius BGa//. vui1.32.4, Dio xi.62.3.

198 Hirtius BGal//. vitt.54.1-3, Caes. BCiv. 1.32.6, Dio xx1.65; cf. Caelius in Cic. Fam. vitt.4.4
(discussion of the ‘lent’ legion in July 51). Magnum bellum: Cic. Alf. v1.2.6, 3.2, 4-1, 5.3 (April to
June), Fam. 1.11.1. Only issue: App. BCiv. 11.29.

1% Hirtius BGal/. vitt.so—1; Caelius in Cie. Fam. vitt.14.1 for Antonius (‘plane studia ex partium
sensu apparuerunr), cf. 13.2 on senatorial support for Caesar in June.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

420 10. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

the moral scourge Rome so desperately needed.2 In a way, he did, but
the effect was disastrous. His vehemence in condemning luxury and vice
was mocked for its hypocrisy (Caelius, accused of homosexual behav-
iour, earned great popularity by turning the charge against Appius
himself); and when he emulated the censors of 70-69 with wholesale
expulsions from the Senate, his colleague resisted only in the case of
Curio, allowing all the others to make their way, full of resentment, to
Caesar.20! Appius, who had recently married one daughter to Pompey’s
son, and one to Cato’s nephew M. Brutus, could only discredit the new
alliance of Pompey and the so-called boni —- whom Caesar and his friends
called the factio.

Everything conspired to polarize the great issue. Pompey was in
Campania, no doubt in connexion with the forces for Syria, when he fell
seriously ill. Immediately and spontaneously, the country towns of Italy
combined to make supplication to the gods for his recovery; they still
saw him as the bulwark of the state, the one hope for peace. When he
recovered amid scenes of joy and festivity, Pompey was dangerously
encouraged.202 Then came young Appius, the censor’s nephew, bringing
the two legions from Gaul; he claimed Caesar’s army was disaffected and
would desert to Pompey if it came to war.203 Finally, news arrived that
the Parthians had left Syria. Pacorus preferred to fight his father Orodes.
The legions would not be needed after all, and could stay in Campania,
swelling Pompey’s military strength at the expense of Caesar’s.204

‘If neither of the two goes off to the Parthian war,’ Caelius had written
in August, ‘I see great quarrels ahead in which strength and steel will be
the arbiters.” Cicero, in Athens on his way home from his province,
foresaw ‘the greatest struggle that history has ever known’. He was
supposedly a friend of both parties; whose side should he be on?20

Cicero landed at Brundisium on 24 November, and made his way ina
leisurely fashion to his villa at Formiae. His arrival was awaited with
keen interest. He was hoping fora triumph; the military activity in Cilicia
had been exactly what Caelius had wished for him as he set out, ‘just

200 Cic. Fam. 1.11.5, cf. 10.3 (‘ut et debes et potes’), 10.11, 13.2. The De Republica was being
widely read at this time: Caelius in Cic. Fam. viit.1.4, cf. Cic. Alf. v1.1.8, 2.9, 3.3, 6.2, VII.2.4, 3.2.

201 Caelius in Cic. Fam. vi1t.14.4 (‘persuasum est ei censuram lomentum aut nitrum esse’), 12.3,
Cic. Aft. v1.9.5; Dio xu.63.3-5, Cic. Att. vit.3.5 (Caesar’s side includes ‘omnis damnatos [n. 196
above], omnis ignominia adfectos’).

2 Cic. Att. vint.16.1, 1x.5.4, Vell. Pat. 1.48.2, Plut. Pomp. 7-1-3, App. BCiv. 11.28. ‘In Pompeio
spem omnem oti’: Cic. Aff. vi.1.11.

203 Plut. Pomp. 57.4, App. BCw. 11.30.

204 Cic. Fam. 1.17.1 (18 July); Att. v1.6.3, vil.1.2 (providential good fortune). Legions: Hirtius
BGall. viit.35, Caes. BCip. 1.2.3, 4-5, 9-4.

205 Caelius in Cic. Fam. vitt.14.4, Cic. A/f. vit.1.2 (trans. Shackleton Bailey 1965-70 (B 108)).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE FINAL CRISIS 421

enough to justify a bit of laurel’.20° More important, however, than the
improbable ¢riumphator was the conservative statesman, the champion of
the rule of law, the author of De Republica. Caesar, now at Ravenna,
wrote in the friendliest terms, making the most of Cato’s niggling
Opposition to the triumph proposal. Pompey, whom Cicero saw at
Cumae and at Formiae, assumed that war was both probable and
justifiable, to avoid the political disaster of Caesar’s second consulship:
‘we will fight in good hope, either of victory or of death as free men.’
Cicero’s own view was less simple; he did not trust either Pompey or the
factio.

Peace is what is wanted. Victory will bring many evils in its train, including the
certainty of a despot ... “Better fight than be a slave,’ you say. For what?
Proscription if you’re beaten and if you win slavery just the same?

Publicly he would support Pompey; privately, he was for peace at any
price.207

At Rome, meanwhile, Curio’s enemies were closing in on him now
that the end of his tribunate was approaching. Attacked in a rowdy
meeting of the Senate by Appius the censor and the consul C. Marcellus,
Curio successfully appealed to majority opinion there, and then followed
up his advantage by proposing that both Caesar and Pompey should
resign their commands. He was supported by Appius’ colleague L. Piso
and Antony now tribune-elect. A division was forced. For the motion,
370; against, 22. Curio’s main object had presumably been to show how
small the factio was; he had not specified when the great men should
resign. While Curio went out to receive the joyful accolades of the crowd
in the Forum, Marcellus rounded bitterly on the Senate: they had voted
to have Caesar for their master, but 4e would not sit idly listening to
speeches while ten legions were marching south across the Alps.

The rumour that Caesar was marching on Rome caused panic and
consternation. Marcellus proposed to the Senate that Caesar be declared
a public enemy, and that the two legions at Capua be mobilized against
him. Curio protested that the rumour was untrue. ‘Very well’, said
Marcellus, ‘if the Senate will not allow me to do what is necessary, I will
do it on my own authority.” Escorted by his supporters (including,
surprisingly, his colleague Paullus), Marcellus proceeded formally to
Pompey’s Alban villa and instructed him to take command of the two

26 Cic. Att. vit.7.5 (‘mirifica exspectatio’ reported by Atticus), Fam. 1.10.2, with Wistrand 1979
(c 289) for the full story of Cicero’s laurelled lictors.

207 Caesar: Cic. Att. vit.t.7, 2-7, 3.11. Pompey: 4.2, 8.4, 9.3f. Cicero: 5.4, 7.7 (trans. Shackleton
Bailey 1965-70 (B 108)); cf. 3.4 (‘de sua potentia dimicant homines hoc tempore periculo civitatis’),
5-5, 6.2. Patriotism more important than triumph: Aféé. vit.3.2, 1X.7.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

422 Io. CAESAR, POMPEY AND ROME

legions, raise whatever other forces might be necessary, and defend the
Republic against Caesar. ‘I will do so’, replied Pompey, ‘if all else fails.’
Curio, restricted to the city by his office, delivered a series of bitter
harangues to the people against the consuls and against Pompey. On 10
December, when his tribunate had expired, he left for Ravenna.208

Two of the new tribunes, Antony and Q. Cassius, now took up the
attack. On 20 December Antony denounced Pompey’s whole career, and
complained that the condemnations under the laws he had passed in 52
were a travesty of justice. Curio, meanwhile, had been entrusted by
Caesar with an important message to the consuls and the Senate, which
he brought post-haste to Rome in time to deliver it on 1 January to the
meeting on the Capitol. Lentulus and the other C. Marcellus, the new
consuls, were unwilling to accept it, but Antony and Cassius insisted that
it should be read. After a long account of the achievements of his career,
Caesar proposed that he and Pompey should lay down their commands
at the same time and submit to the judgement of the Roman people; if
Pompey did not agree, then ‘he would come quickly and avenge his
country’s wrongs and his own’. Lentulus, who was presiding, would not
allow a debate on the letter itself but asked for opinions on the political
situation in general, and successfully put to the vote Metellus Scipio’s
proposal that if Caesar did not disband his army by a fixed date (probably
that of professio for the consular elections) he should be regarded as an
enemy of the state. The two tribunes immediately applied their veto.?

On 4 January, the day after his fifty-seventh birthday, Cicero returned
to Rome. He was alarmed at Caesar’s threatening tone, but equally at the
intransigence of those whose blind hostility — or jealousy of Caesar’s
success — was driving the Republic headlong into war. He approved the
compromise suggestion that Caesar should keep just Cisalpina and
Illyricum, with two legions, until his second consulship; or failing that,
just Illyricum, with one legion. Pompey was willing to be persuaded, but
Cato, Lentulus and Caesar’s other enemies saw to it that the proposal
came to nothing.?!0

On 7 January, they succeeded in carrying the emergency decree: ‘the
consuls, praetors, tribunes of the plebs and proconsuls in the vicinity of
the city shall see to it that the Republic suffers no harm’. The strong-
points in the city were occupied with soldiers. Two of the tribunes of the

208 Dio xi.64.1-66.5, App. BCiv. 11.30-1, cf. Plut. Pomp. 58.3-59.1. Cic. Aft. vit.5.4 (‘hoc iter
Pompei’) suggests that Pompey had left to take command of the two legions by the middle of
December; but he was back in the neighbourhood of Rome in early January (Caes. BCiv. 1.2.1).

209 Cic. Att. vit.8.5 (‘querela de damnatis’); Plut. Pomp. 59.2, Caes. 30.2, App. BCiv. 11.32 (trans.
H. White); Caes. BCiv. 1.1-2, with Raaflaub 1974 (c 238) 56.

210 Cic. Fam, xvi.11.2 (‘ex utraque parte sunt qui pugnare cupiant’), Aff. ix.11a.2 (to Caesar);
Plut. Pomp. 59.3-4, Caes. 31.1, Suet. Iu/. 29.2; cf. App. BCiv. 11.32 (suggested by Caesar himself in
December), Vell. Pat. 1.49.4, with Woodman 1983 (B 129) 86 for the textual problem.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE FINAL CRISIS 423

plebs, Antony and Cassius, were told that their safety could not be
guaranteed if they remained in the city. With Curio and Caelius (who had
decided Caesar had the better army), they fled indignantly to Caesar.2"!

That was serious, but not unprecedented. Cato no doubt remembered
the flight of Metellus Nepos to Pompey in 62; nothing had come of that
except a strengthening of the conservative position. Pompey was
confident that he himself could raise soldiers in Italy just by stamping his
foot. It was therefore a devastating shock when the news came in that
Caesar was marching south with the Thirteenth legion.?!2

Caesar’s view was that a clique in the Senate had robbed him of six
months of his command; Cicero, writing to Atticus in December,
implies that the command had already reached its legal term, or at least
would reach it very soon. The ‘legal question’ (Rechtsfrage) has generated
a vast controversy in modern scholarship, with no clear result achieved.
It must have been equally unclear at the time, since there was evidently
no one date for the expiry of the command which both sides could
accept.!3 But in entering Italy with an army, Caesar made the question
irrelevant: whether or not he still held a legally valid command, it was
not valid for that.

As against Vercingetorix three years before, Caesar had reacted to the
news the tribunes brought with immediate action and a swiftly calcu-
lated gamble. “What’s going on?’ asked Cicero in despair:2!4

‘We hold Cingulum, we’ve lost Ancona, Labienus has deserted Caesar.’ Are we
talking about a general of the Roman people? or Hannibal?

211 Caes. BCiv. 1.5, Cic. Fam. xvi.11.2, Dio xi1.3.2f, App. BCiv. 11.33.

212 Nepos: p. 358-60 above. Pompey’s confidence and its sequel: Plut. Pomp. 57.5, 60.3—4.

213, Caes. BCiv. 1.9.2 (message given at Ariminum); Cic. Afs. v1.7.6, 9.4. The modern controversy
begins with Mommsen 1857 (c 229); for good recent discussions. see Gruen 1974 (C 209) 4756 and
Seager 1979 (c 258) 193-5.

214 Cic. Aft. vit.t1.1; for Labienus, Dio xut.4.2—-4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 11

CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

ELIZABETH RAWSON

I. THE CIVIL WAR

We do not know exactly where the Rubicon was; nor are we sure that it
was on 1o January that Caesar crossed it (by the sun it was nearly two
months earlier). But it is possible that on doing so he did say, quoting a
Greek comedy by Menander, ‘let the die be cast’.

For the events of the next weeks, we have Caesar’s own account,
which can occasionally be convicted by Cicero’s correspondence (which
includes some letters from Caesar and Pompey themselves, as well as
from others) of apologetic bias. Dividing his single legion into two parts
he marched with five cohorts to Ariminum, and sent Antony, probably
immediately,? to Arretium to block the route from Rome by the Via
Cassia. He himself, on reaching Ancona, held the head of the Via
Flaminia. When news of this reached Rome on 17 January, Pompey
insisted on abandoning the panic-stricken city, and retired with the
consuls and many senators to Campania. Caesar’s other troops began to
come up, and perhaps even while abortive negotiations were in progress
he occupied all Picenum. Several small garrisons went over to him; L.
Domitius Ahenobarbus used others, and troops he had raised himself —
the equivalent of three legions — to make a stand at the strategic
crossroads of Corfinium, refusing as the new proconsul of Gallia
Transalpina to obey the pleas of Pompey, the proconsul of the Spains, to
join him at Luceria in Apulia. But Domitius was surrounded and forced
by his men to surrender. Caesar ostentatiously released all prisoners of
senatorial or equestrian rank, not to mention the state funds in Domitius’
charge, and recruited the troops (many Domitius’ own tenants) whom
he then despatched to Sicily.

Pompey withdrew to Brundisium, whither he had already sent some
of his men. On 4 March the consuls put to sea from the town with part of
the forces, only a few days before Caesar arrived, now with three veteran

1 Plut. Caes. 32.6; Pomp. 60.4 (cf. Athen. x1tt.5 $9e). Perhaps reported by Asinius Pollio, who (so
Plut. Caes. 32.7) was with Caesar.
2 Caes. BCiv. 1.11 suggests, perhaps apologetically, this took place after negotiations had failed.

424

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 425

and three new legions, to find Pompey still present. But on 17 March, in
spite of Caesar’s attempts to make the harbour unusable, he escaped the
attempted blockade and crossed to Epirus. Caesar tells us that it was
bound to take time to collect sufficient shipping from Gaul and the rest
of Italy for a pursuit (it was now in fact the depth of winter), though he
was able to send troops to Sicily and Sardinia, to ensure the corn supplies
of the city of Rome. He returned to the city to regularize his position as
far as he could; and then set off for Spain to secure his hold of the West
against the Pompeian legions there. :

If Caesar’s account of these events is not wholly truthful, it is a
fascinating propaganda document. It is only unfortunate that we do not
know exactly when it was written or published; some suppose that the
whole Be/lum Civile was written in 47, where it breaks off during Caesar’s
stay at Alexandria, others that part at least dates from the end of 49. Some
think publication was posthumous.} It is probable that the readership
envisaged was a fairly broad one. At all events, Caesar uses detail with
familiar brilliance to give the impression, justified or not, that his res
gestae had made such an impression in Italy that even Auximum, of which
Pompey was patron, opened its gates to him, while Cingulum welcomed
his forces, though it owed its existence as a municipium to Labienus, who
had gone over to the Senate immediately after the crossing of the
Rubicon. Suetonius reveals that Caesar’s agents had been busy, and
generous, in Italy as well as Rome and the provinces in the last few
years,4 while Pompey’s very influence in Picenum will have raised up
enemies to him there. Whether Labienus was one of Pompey’s Picene
clients, reverting to his first loyalty, as Syme supposed, is uncertain;
Cicero acclaimed his Republican principle and others imply personal
jealously of his commander.5

Caesar makes much of his mercy at Corfinium, of his control of his
men and his respect for the property both of the townsfolk and his
opponents. It is clear that this did have a great effect on many who had
feared he would be Sulla and Catiline rolled into one. He indicates deftly
that it is the other side that has links with Sulla and the Sullans.¢
Furthermore it is Caesar who is the defender of the constitution; it is his
enemies who are ignoring the rights of tribunes (‘even Sulla left their
veto’), passing the senatus consultum ultimum on inadequate grounds (he

3 Suet. Iu/. 56.4 reports Pollio as saying that Caesar intended to revise his Commentaries, which
were distinctly inaccurate; but this probably includes the BGa//., certainly published in his lifetime.

4 Suet. Iu/. 28.1: magnificent public works in Italian towns.

5 Syme 1938 (c 273); Cic. Avs. esp. vit.12.5, 13.1; Dio xi1.43 says he had become arrogant and
quarrelled with Caesar; Hirtius, BGa//. vitt.52 that he had for some time been tampered with by
Caesar’s enemies, but Caesar trusted him.

© Caes. BCiv. 1.6, noting the presence of Faustus Sulla with his opponents; ina letter of early 49 he
said that only Sulla ‘whom I shall! not imitate’ founded a lasting rule on cruelty, Cic. Aff. tx.7¢.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

426

eet =>, Aquileia
wee Neos Tergeste

S
Foru \\
Y, : = enna s20> NN
<? Pistoria / “a 2 NY
'b] \ “luce a Ariminum WN 1b]
“a Sonn x
-o=- . i
‘ s
Volatet Arretium? q v *
: a o. SS
tc \ 16. Bae ;
=) ra ey =
liva 6 e ¢ ‘ S
Oe
Nex *e rd

5-8

ae
s
oO

Tyrrhenian

Sea

{d)

lonian

~ Land over 1000 metres

13 Italy

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 427

does not deny the basic legality of the measure as he may have done in 63
B.C.), appointing privati to provinces, and so on; all he wants is the
consulship for 48 — after the proper ten-year interval.” Not that he denies
he is fighting primarily to protect his dignitas; to safeguard this, to defend
the tribunes and free the state from the power of a narrow faction is the
order he attaches to his motives.8 The urban plebs was greatly devoted to
its tribunes; the countrymen who made up most of any army will not
have cared much about them, or the power of the factio paucorum, though
Caesar later makes an ex-centurion state that he is fighting for Caesar’s
dignitas ‘and our liberty’.? The richer classes in Italy also cared little for
the squabbles of the principes: Sulla’s savagery however had been felt by
much of the peninsula. Cicero complains that the people he talks to in
Campania care for nothing but their ‘wretched little estates and for-
tunes’, and now that they have been reassured as to Caesar’s intentions
love him and fear Pompey, who had been uttering dire threats. The poor,
Cicero had already said, were for Caesar.!0

In addition, many or most people seem to have been unprepared for
Pompey’s decision to leave Italy.!! This was probably justified from a
military point of view: his troops consisted of the two legions which had
been Caesar’s and which he insisted could not be trusted, of rusty
veterans and of sparse new levies, their men as he said still strange to each
other;!2 but he controlled the seas and could expect to raise huge forces in
the Orient. ‘If Sulla could do it, can’t I?’ he said of the reconquest of Italy
from the East.!3 But Cicero was doubtless right in seeing it as politically
and psychologically very damaging to abandon the capital and indeed all
Italy, intending to starve and then invade it.14 Napoleon was to believe
that Pompey should have held Rome at any cost. There has even been an
attempt to rehabilitate Domitius’ policy, but this is unconvincing;
Cicero thought him stupid, and in fact he had limited military
experience.!5

Both sides also sought propaganda advantage in negotiation.
Whether they sought anything else is hard to say. Naturally Caesar’s
account is suspect here; and Cicero was not in the confidence of the
principals. Caesar’s distant kinsman, the younger L. Caesar, seems to
have been sent north privately by Pompey before he left Rome —
according to Caesar himself Pompey wished to excuse himself for his
actions, denying personal animus, and to beg Caesar too to put the state

7 Caes. BCiv. 1.5, 6, 7. 8 Caes. BCiv. 1.22. 9 Caes. BCiv. 111.91.

10 Aft, VIII.13.2, 3.5.

11 Von Fritz 1942 (c 196). When this was made is uncertain. Cicero knew it was on the cards from
the start, but could get no clear information and long thought it would be to Spain if at all.

12 Ap. Aff. virt.12A.2 and 3, 12C.2 and 4, 12D.1.

13) Att, 1X.10.2. 14 Alt. 1X.9.2.

15 Burns 1966 (c 182); Af. vitt.1.3, cf. Brut. 267 (no rhetorical art).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

428 Il. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

before his private interests.!6 L. Caesar, and the praetor L. Roscius, who
had also come to Caesar, brought back proposals for a compromise:
Cicero shows that Caesar offered to let the newly appointed Domitius
and Considius take over Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul, and that he
agreed to come to Rome for the elections, if Pompey meanwhile went to
Spain; and that the Senate accepted these terms, insisting only that
Caesar retire from Italy before Pompey stopped levying or dismissed his
troops. Cicero thought Caesar bound to accept; but the latter complains
that it was unfair to say he should disarm while his enemies continued to
recruit, and he did not suspend operations. Cicero shows the Senate also
held that final terms could only be settled by a meeting of the Senate back
in Rome. They could then have repudiated the agreement from a far
stronger position.!”

But the real nub of the matter may be this; even if Caesar kept
Illyricum — which is not mentioned, but which he had previously asked
to retain — till near the elections, even if Pompey was in Spain and Italy
demilitarized, so that no court could be intimidated by troops as Milo’s
had been,'8 even if the factio gave a guarantee that they would not allow
the threatened prosecution to be mounted at all, was this a promise they
could be trusted to keep? In other words could Caesar sincerely give up
his old insistence on standing for the consulship in absence? Cicero says
that Curio ‘laughs at L. Caesar’s embassy’; Curio was very frank about
his leader, assuring Cicero later that his clementia was merely assumed for
political ends; and Cicero probably means here that Curio did not think
Caesar’s proposals for peace were seriously meant either, but designed to
gain credit and perhaps time. But the cynical Curio might have been
wrong. Cicero came to believe that both the great men wanted war to
establish their own supremacy, as did many of their followers on their
leaders’ behalf; but he too might have been wrong.!9

Caesar perhaps did hope to detach Pompey from his new allies —
something Pompey’s zigzag political course hitherto made look poss-
ible. The proposals sent back via L. Caesar included one for a personal
meeting with Pompey — it was rejected, which may be one of the reasons
Caesar broke off negotiations. Later on Caesar sent N. Magius, an officer
of Pompey’s who had fallen into his hands, to Brundisium to propose a
meeting to remove the misunderstandings between them created by
their common enemies and restore their old friendship; and Balbus put it
about that Caesar only wanted to live in safety with Pompey as the first

16 Shackleton Bailey 1956 (c 259)and 1965—70 (B 108) 1v App. Caes. BCiv. 1.8, Roscius came from
Pompey.

17 Att. VILWg.1, 17.2, VUI.18.2.

18 This was generally expected, Suet. Iu/. 30.3.

19 Aft. vit.19, x.4.8, cf. Caelius ap. x.gA.1;X.4.8, §.1; VIL 11.2. Utergue regnare vult. Atticus agreed,
x.1a, when Caesar returned to Rome at least.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 429

men in the state.20 Pompey sent Magius back for further talks, but it
seems refused the interview. Caesar apparently tried again via Libo for
one, but Pompey very correctly said he could not negotiate in the
absence of the consuls, who had now left Italy. To Caesar, the legitimate
authorities seemed simply to be his énimici, and he did not try again to
negotiate with them; naturally for their part the optimates did not trust
Pompey, which was perhaps why he was not granted the overall
command which would have made his task so much easier, and which
Cato had had the sense to propose.?!

For the genuineness at least of the attempt to detach Pompey there
speaks the fact that Caesar’s position was in some ways weak, quite apart
from the uncertainty of the outcome in a civil war. True, he had calmed
some of the apprehension about his Gallic auxiliaries,22 and about
proscriptions and fabulae novae. But his invasion of Italy was high treason,
and only a minority of senators had stayed in Rome or returned there
after the first panic. He had many nobles on his side, but they tended to
be young (families were often split) and/or disreputable; the principes viri
were elsewhere — a number trying to stand neutral. Perhaps only three
consulars — the timid lawyer Ser. Sulpicius, who in fact left Italy later, the
elderly and inconspicuous M’. Lepidus and L. Volcacius Tullus — agreed
to attend the Senate in Rome; even Caesar’s father-in-law L. Piso may
have held aloof, though the praetor M. Lepidus (like, probably, his
colleague L. Roscius) was there, with several tribunes. Hence strenuous
efforts to win over various distinguished men, notably Balbus’ original
patron the consul Lentulus Crus; the younger Balbus actually tried to go
secretly to him in Brundisium.?3 And, of course, Cicero. Cicero was
disillusioned with Pompey and the optimates, and hesitated piteously as
to whether to go to a neutral area, to stay in Italy, or to follow Pompey
overseas, as he finally did from personal loyalty alone. But he never
wavered from the conviction that Caesar had morally and constitution-
ally no leg to stand on: ‘What is honour (dignitas) without honesty?’; and
when the two men met, on Caesar’s way back to Rome, Cicero said he
would only attend the Senate there if he could propose a decree that
Caesar should go to neither Spain nor Greece in arms. ‘I don’t think he
was pleased with me; but I was pleased with myself, which I have not
been of late.’ He was also shocked by Caesar’s dubious entourage and his
threats to use their advice if he could get no better.

2% Caes. BCiv. 1.26.2ff says Magius did not return (perhaps only not as quickly as expected). But
see Cic. Aff. 1x.7 and 1x.13A.1, with copies of letters from Caesar.

21 Plut. Pomp. 61, Cato 52.

22 For which e.g. Dio x11.8.6.

2 Ser. Sulpicius, Bauman 1985 (F 179). L. Piso, Cic. Fam. xiv.14.2, Aff. vir.13.1, Dio xu1.16.4,
Phot. Caes. 37.1. Balbus, Aés. viti.ga.2, 1X.6.1; vit.15a shows that his uncle, the elder Balbus, also
tried in vain to talk to the consul. 24 Alt. VIL.UL.1; 1X.18.1-2, cf. 19.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

430 11. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

Caesar was in Rome for about two weeks. The tribunes Antony and
Q. Cassius summoned the Senate to meet outside the pomoerium, where
Caesar in a self-justifying speech asked for senatorial co-operation; if he
did not get it he would do without it. He inspired a decree that an
embassy should be sent to Pompey; but not surprisingly, given the
threats uttered by Pompey and the optimates against those who had not
left with them, no one was willing to serve on it. More embarrassing still
was the action of the tribune L. Metellus, who vetoed all proposals,
including one giving Caesar the money left in the treasury on the flight
from the city, and personally tried to prevent its removal. Caesar crossed
the pomoerium with a body of troops, which was of course illegal, and
threatened the sacrosanct tribune with death. He got the treasure, but
naturally the defender of tribunician rights does not mention this
contretemps, and he set off for Spain angry at his loss of popularity with
the plebs and the time wasted.25 M. Lepidus was left in charge of Rome.

It was also disturbing that Pompey by messengers, and soon Domitius
Ahenobarbus in person, succeeded in persuading the authorities in the
famous Greek city of Massilia, directly on Caesar’s route, that their own
benefactions to and ties with the place should take preference over
Caesar’s more recent ones; Domitius not only had an inherited c/iente/a in
the area, but of course claimed to be the new governor of Transalpine
Gaul. The Massiliots seized all the shipping and corn in the area. Caesar
had little alternative but to besiege the town; he soon had to leave the
business to D. Brutus and C. Trebonius, with a few ships and three
legions, and the city only surrendered to him, after a brilliant resistance,
on his return months later. Massilia’s alliance with Rome was supposed
to date from the regal period, and there was a long history of co-
operation against the barbarians. Though for this reason Caesar did not
want the city stormed, and finally while stripping it of its lands and
wealth left it its liberty, yet the siege and capture, to judge by Cicero,
made a bad impression on Roman — and doubtless on Greek — opinion.

While at Massilia, Caesar says, he sent his legate C. Fabius to seize the
passes over the Pyrenees; some have thought he must have done this
earlier.2” He followed withhis wonted rapidity. There were three armies
in Spain, with Afranius in Citerior, and with Petreius and Varro (the
great scholar) in Ulterior. The first two had concentrated their forces in
Citerior, where Pompey had support dating from the Sertorian War.
They were experienced soldiers, but Caesar’s main problems, as so often

25 Caes. BCiv. 1.32-3, contrasted with Dio xi1.15-16, App. BCiv. 11.41. Curio told Cicero that
Caesar, spurred on by his followers, was enraged with Metellus, A/t. x.4.8; X.gA.1.

2 Caes. BCiv. 1.34-6, 56-8, 11.1-16, 22; Just. Epit. 43.3.4; Cic. Off. 11.28.

27 Adcock 1932 (Cc 152) 648; Cic. A/s. viil.3.7, rumours at Rome in February of engagements in
the Pyrenees.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 431

in Spanish warfare, were with supply and the elements. Reports that he
was near defeat decided some laggards in Italy to join Pompey; in Spain
there were rumours that Pompey was marching through Africa to his
provinces. However, at the beginning of August Afranius and Petreius
were forced to surrender near Ilerda, and were spared. Varro, isolated in
Ulterior, where Caesar had twice served and had friends, soon capitu-
lated too.28

Meanwhile Cato (complaining, according to Caesar, that Pompey had
betrayed the Republic by not making better preparations for war)
withdrew from Sicily before Curio arrived there for Caesar. Curio went
on, according to orders, to Africa, where the governor Attius Varus had
a superior force. But it was by the army of king Juba of Numidia —
unexpectedly, since the news of Caesar’s success at Ilerda had arrived,
but Juba had obligations to Pompey and personal grudges against
Caesar and Curio — that the Caesarian forces were trapped and Curio,
who refused the chance of escape, killed. Caesar, who clearly liked the
spirited young noble, is frank about but indulgent to his fatal over-
confidence in the Commentaries.29

In the autumn Caesar returned to Rome, dealing with Massilia and
then with a mutiny of his troops in Cisalpine Gaul (which he omits to
mention) on the way. Acquiring the consulship for 48, for which he had
taken such trouble, was not an entirely straightforward matter. He failed
to obtain a ruling that M. Lepidus, though only praetor, could preside
over consular elections,>° so Lepidus proposed a law that Caesar should
be made dictator, something for which precedent could be found; and as
dictator Caesar presided over his own election to the consulship with P.
Servilius Isauricus, respected son of the distinguished man under whom
he had served in youth, and someone whose adherence was perhaps
something of a coup.3! Caesar passed laws restoring the political rights of
the sons of those proscribed by Sulla (these included his first wife’s
brother P. Cinna), and as expected recalling all those who had been
condemned under the compendious procedures introduced by Pompey
after Clodius’ death, taking the specious ground that they had not hada
fair trial. One such was the historian Sallust. These measures enlarged
the body of his supporters, but the second at least hardly contributed
much respectability. On the other hand, the measures Caesar took to
cope with a debt crisis were as we shall see statesmanlike and moderate,
though perhaps not quite as moderate as his account suggests. At all
events, they displeased debtors, who wanted a cancellation, and a little

2% Caes. BCiv. 11.17-20. 2 Caes. BCiv. 11.36-42.

31 There were even connexions with Cato, whose niece he had married and with whom he had
once co-operated.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

432 II. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

later Cicero’s friend Caelius Rufus, now praetor, stirred up such unrest
that the Senate passed the senatus consultum ultimum (Caesar does not
record this) and Servilius deposed him. Caelius then raised a Pompeian
revolt in south Italy with the aid of Milo, now back from exile; but both
were soon killed.*2

After eleven days Caesar left for Brundisium and the campaign against
Pompey, having laid down the dictatorship. Inconclusive naval opera-
tions had ended with Pompey’s admirals retaining control of the
Adriatic, while he himself was busy training his men and the ‘Senate’ sat
at Thessalonica; but politically it was a weakness that elections could not
be held for 48.53 The East had been stripped of troops; the consul
Lentulus Crus had raised two legions in Asia (we have his decree
exempting Jews who were Roman citizens from service in them).**
Metellus Scipio was bringing two more from Syria; Pompey’s son went
on to Egypt. Pompey used his credit to persuade client kings and peoples
to send large numbers of auxiliary troops; he even tried to negotiate with
Parthia, and was in touch with Burebistas, who had recently welded the
Dacians into a great power.*5 Cicero, who was miserable in Pompey’s
camp, destested what he saw as relying on barbarians against Roman
citizens as muchas he loathed the threats of the optimates against all who
had tried to remain neutral and their greed for the spoils of war and
office.36

Since Pompey’s army was still growing Caesar must strike quickly.
But he did not yet have adequate transports, and though he succeeded in
getting across with seven legions, the rest of his army was stuck for
months with Antony in Brundisium, and Caesar kept in difficulties for
provisions, while Bibulus commanded the sea. Another suggestion of a
meeting with Pompey came to nothing, perhaps because this time it was
Caesar who proposed that the Senate and people at Rome should decide
on terms.3’ At last, after Bibulus had succumbed to his exertions,
stubborn to the last, Antony got out to join his commander, and
manoeuvring ended with Caesar drawing his lines right round Pompey’s
position outside Dyrrachium — partly for the moral effect on Pompey’s
eastern allies38 — though without having enough troops to man them
properly. Pompey tried to break out, and finally gained enough success
in an engagement for Caesar to retire, telling his friends that if his
opponent had been a conqueror he could have conquered Caesar that
day.?

32 Caes. BCiv. t11.20-2.

33 Dio xx1.43; about 200 senators were present. The magistrates of 49 were prorogued.

* Joseph. AJ xiv.228ff.

35 Parthia, Dio xu11.2.5; Burebistas, SIG 762, 21-36.

% Cic. Aft. 1x.10.3, 11.3; x1.6.2 and 6; Plut. Cie. 38. ¥ Caes. BCiv. ut.10.
8 Caes. BCiv. 111.43.3, cf. Dolabella, Cic. Fam. 1x.9.2. 3% Plut. Caes. 39.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 433

Caesar now marched east,“ partly to save one of the legates he had ~
sent into Macedonia and Greece, Domitius Calvinus, whom Metellus
Scipio, arrived from Syria, was threatening; he authorized a massacre at
Gomphi in Thessaly, which resisted him, but treated generously towns
that surrendered. Pompey determined to spare Italy invasion by settling
the issue in the East, pursued Caesar to save Metellus; and probably
under pressure from his now over-confident optimate allies, who
accused him of prolonging the war to extend his command, decided to
risk battle rather than harass his tired opponent, as Cato and Cicero are
said to have wished (both were left at Dyrrachium).*! Somewhere near
Pharsalus in Thessaly, on 9 August 48 B.c., Pompey was defeated in spite
of superior numbers. Domitius Ahenobarbus was among those killed;
Pompey fled. Caesar, surveying the field, said ‘They would have it. I,
Caius Caesar, after all my victories, would have been condemned in the
courts if I had not sought the aid of my army.’42 He burned Pompey’s
correspondence and let it be known that he would forgive all who asked
for mercy. To his pleasure, M. Brutus was one of the first to beg it.

The Pompeian naval squadrons withdrew from Italy, and some
surrendered. Cicero, the most senior in rank of those still at Dyrrachium,
refused the command of the troops there from Cato and returned to
Italy, to find himself stuck in his turn at Brundisium, because Antony,
who was soon sent back to Italy to take control, said he could not allow
him to return to Rome without Caesar’s permission. Cato, with
Pompey’s sons and others, went to Cyrenaica, hoping to rejoin Pompey.
Dio says that Pompey’s defeat was so unexpected he had no plans to fall
back on.*4 He fled to Lesbos, where he was reunited with his wife, and
then made for Egypt, which had sent him aid and where many of the
Roman garrison buttressing the regime were his veterans. The Senate in
exile had probably recently recognized young Ptolemy XIII and made
Pompey his ¢#for.45 But the king’s advisers had him killed as he landed.
Cicero claimed tht something like this would have happened wherever
Pompey had taken refuge. All he could now say in tribute to his old
associate was that he was ‘an honest, decent, serious man’.

Caesar was in hot pursuit, though he touched in Asia, where he
remitted taxes and was paid extravagant honours. He reached Alexan-
dria with two very depleted legions on 2 October, only three days after
Pompey’s death, and arrogantly marched into the city with his lictors to
establish himself in the palace.4” Since the Etesian winds would prevent

40 Plut. Caes. 39.6, he felt he should have done so earlier.

41 Plut. Pomp. 67-8, Cato 53.3, Cic. Fam. vit.3.2.

42 Suet. Iu. 30.4, from Pollio, who claims to be quoting word for word; cf. Plut. Caes. 46.1.

43 Plut. Caes. 46.2. Brutus (properly Q. Caepio Brutus), was the son of Caesar’s old flame Servilia

(born long before that tie is attested, so not Caesar’s).
“ Dio xii.i~z. 45 Heinen 1966 (D 194). 4 Cic. Att. x1.6.5. 47 Dio xuut.7.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

434 11. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

his leaving at once, he declared that he would arbitrate in the armed
struggle between Cleopatra, aged twenty-one, and her husband Ptolemy
aged thirteen, the two elder children of Auletes, who had left them as co-
rulers and commended them to Rome’s protection. He also set about
exacting Auletes’ still unpaid debts to the so-called triumvirs (which
aroused further ill feeling). He soon found himself held up in Alexandria
with the ambitious Cleopatra as his mistress, and Ptrolemy’s ministers, his
troops and the Alexandrian populace (which felt it was fighting for
Egypt’s independence), not to mention a younger sister Arsinoe, as his
enemies. A nasty little war dragged on (part of the famous library was
among the casualties)48 until in late March 47 Caesar was reinforced by
troops led overland by Mithridates of Pergamum, a Hellenized connex-
ion of the Pontic and Galatian royal families, and including a strong
Jewish contingent under the high priest’s minister Antipater.4? The
young king was drowned in the subsequent fighting. The Bel/um
Alexandrinum® gives the impression that after this Caesar left Egypt
almost immediately, though many scholars keep him there till June or
even July, and blame him severely for the delay, accepting that he went
ona tour up the Nile with Cleopatra.5! At all events, Cleopatra and a still
younger brother were left to rule Egypt, with three legions (under the
son of one of Caesar’s freedmen) to support them, and the gift of Cyprus
to sweeten the pill. Towards the end of June Cleopatra bore a son whom
she called Ptolemy Caesar, and the Alexandrians Caesarion; Octavian
was jealously to assert that he was not Caesar’s child, but Caesar must
have believed that he was, if he allowed the name (used in a letter of
Cicero’s very soon after the Ides of March, shortly before Cleopatra, who
had come to Rome in 46, returned to Egypt).52

Landing at Antioch in Syria, Caesar heard that all was not well at
Rome. But he felt that his most urgent task was to settle the East, and in
particular to deal with king Pharnaces of the Cimmerian Bosporus (the
Crimea) who had seized the chance to restore the kingdom of his father,
the great Mithridates. Pharnaces had invaded Asia Minor and defeated
Caesar’s legate Domitius Calvinus and the Galatian forces, but was
himself immeditely overcome by Caesar at Zela, near which Mithridates
had beaten a Roman army. ‘Veni, vidi, vici’, wrote Caesar; he set up a
trophy to overshadow Mithridates’, and depreciated Pompey’s victory
over such foes. At last he could return to Italy.53

48 Fraser 1972 (D 192) 1, 334-5, 476.

49 Joseph. AJ xiv.127-36, Bf 1.187-93.

$0 [Caes.] BAlex. 33. This straightforward account has been attributed to Caesar’s officer Hirtius,
the author of BGea//. vit, probably wrongly.

51 Lord 1936 (D 207); Heinen 1966 (D 194) as App. BCiv. 11.90.

52 Heinen 1969 (D 195); Cic. AZé. xtv.20.2.

53 Plut. Caes. 50.2; Suet. Iu/. 35.2, 37.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 435

Caesar, says Dio, had been ashamed to send a despatch with the news
of Pharsalus, which was not believed for a long time.54 When it was, in
September 48, he was made dictator for a year. Antony was nominated as
his magister equitum, but proved oppressive and inefficient. In 47
Dolabella as tribune renewed the agitation on behalf of debtors. When
Antony was in Campania struggling with a mutiny the Senate had
recourse again to the senatus consultum ultimum, ineffectively since only the
plebeian magistrates had been elected, and no one was able to enforce it.
Finally Antony restored partial order in Rome, with serious loss of life
and so of his remaining popularity. With no news from Alexandria for
months, and a great deal from Africa, Italy was on tenter-hooks.*

On hearing of Pompey’s death Cato had led an epic march through the
desert from Cyrenaica to the province of Africa,5° to join Metellus
Scipio, who as a consular was recognized as commander-in-chief of the
Republican coalition, though Labienus was probably its military inspi-
ration. It included king Juba, and ultimately disposed of very great
forces, though there seems to have been no claim that the Senate was
now in Africa. After a period of success, Pompey’s naval squadrons were
driven from the Adriatic and basing themselves in Africa made descents
on Sardinia and Sicily. Contact was made with Spain, where Caesar’s
governor in Ulterior, Q. Cassius, had united provincials and Roman
troops in detestation of him; and Dio says that even an invasion of Italy
was planned.”

In Rome Caesar made it clear that Antony had lost his confidence, but,
surprisingly, that Dolabella had not. He recalled the mutinous troops to
their allegiance,58 had magistrates elected for the rest of 47, and for 46,
when he was to be — irregularly — consul again (with Lepidus). He
borrowed money for the war, sold up the property of Pompey and those
opponents who were dead or unpardoned (exacting, unlike Sulla, the full
price from purchasers), and eluded an attempt to delay his departure for
Africa by a leading haruspex, who prophesied disaster if he set sail before
the solstice (he went to Sicily mainly by road, sent a detachment ahead,
and himself put out on 25 December — though by the heavens the solstice
was still weeks away).°?

As usual he had inadequate shipping, and this time did not know
where he might be able to land. Indeed he had some difficulty in
establishing a bridgehead — Appian and Dio represent him as badly
mauled by Labienus — and then in provisioning himself by sea. The

5 Dio xx1.18; cf. Plut. Caes. 56.4. 55 Dio xuit.26.

56 Plut. Cato 56.3. Perhaps not as epic as in Lucan Péars. 1x, but a route rarely attempted by an
army. 57 Dio xx11.56.4.

58 He addressed them as Quirites, i.e. merely citizens, not fellow-soldiers, with marked effect,
Suet. Iu/. 70. % Rawson 1978 (c 246) 14}.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

436 Il. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

campaign was to be a difficult one. It is recorded by an anonymous
officer who was not in Caesar’s confidence and has little strategic grasp,
but who conveys vividly the trust his anxious subordinates had in their
general’s own confidence, as well as the problems caused by the
‘amazing’ light-armed native troops and the unfamiliar tactics employed
by Labienus and the others, which we are told drove Caesar into
unaccustomed caution.69 However, Bocchus of Mauretania and the
Roman adventurer in his service, P. Sittius, invaded Numidia to draw off
Juba, and propaganda representing Scipio and other Romans as mere
tools of a barbarian king, with promises of material benefits to provin-
cials and citizens alike, increased the desertions to Caesar that began to
take place; the native Gaetulians’ loyalty to the memory of Marius,
Caesar’s kinsman, was also exploited. Finally Caesar’s enemies tried to
trap him outside the town of Thapsus, which stood on a spit of land
between the sea and a lagoon. Caesar’s troops got out of hand and
attacked prematurely but with success, under the cry ‘Felicitas’. They
would give no quarter, even to prominent men. Caesar marched on to
Utica, where its citizens refused to resist, as did the numerous Italian
negotiatores there. Cato, who was in command, after organizing the escape
of all senators and others who wished to go, committed suicide, cheating
Caesar of a final display of clemency; he held that ‘to pardon men as if he
were their master’ was something Caesar could have no legal right to
do.®! Metellus Scipio, Juba and others perished in different ways, but
Labienus and Pompey’s two sons managed to establish themselves in
Spain. The war was still not over.

A few men, who had been pardoned by Caesar once but renewed the
fight, were executed. Arrangements included provincializing part of
Juba’s kingdom; the rest was given to the Mauretanian kings and Sittius.
Fines and confiscations were imposed in the old province. In mid-June
46 Caesar left for Sardinia (‘the only one of his new properties he has not
yet visited,’ wrote Cicero sarcastically);®? he arrived in Rome in late July
46.

This time he spent rather longer there. At the end of September he
celebrated four triumphs, in theory all over foreign enemies (as alone
was customary) ~ Gaul, Egypt, Pharnaces and Juba. Vercingetorix,
Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe, and Juba’s four-year-old son figured in the
processions, and the first-named was then put to death. The citizens
received gifts of money and food (some of the soldiers objected, though
they themselve got 24,000 sesterces each, the equivalent of a lifetime’s
pay)® and grand games inmemory of Caesar’s daughter Julia took place.

6 [Caes.] BASr. 10, 19, 31. 61 Plut. Cato 58-70. 8 Cic. Fam. 1x.7.2.

63 Val. Max. 11.8.7; but App. BCiv. 11.102 says there were pictures and models of battles against
citizens and of Republican generals, except for Pompey (so loved by the plebs).

Suet. Inf. 38.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CIVIL WAR 437

But the news from Further Spain was bad and probably towards the end
of the year Caesar, who had hoped to deal with the war through his
legates,®5 set off once more, leaving Italy under his new magister equitum,
Lepidus.

By now few veterans were available and Caesar could take only one
experienced legion. Though in Rome, and even at Thapsus, he had
forgiven most of those who fought for Pompey, he treated those now in
arms as plain rebels. It was improper to enslave citizens in civil war, but
they could be massacred. Both sides committed atrocities; Caesar’s men
once adorned their fortifications with severed heads, as the clumsy
narrator of the Bel/lum Hispaniense reveals.©© At first Cn. Pompeius,
Pompey’s elder son, refused battle, perhaps on Labienus’ advice, and
Caesar’s troops were left to the rigours of a winter campaign, but
desertions to his side gained momentum and at last on a fine sunny day
Pompeius accepted battle near Munda.® He almost prevailed; according
to Plutarch Caesar said that for the first time he was fighting not for
victory but his life.68 But a last personal appeal stiffened his men, and in
the end they triumphed. Labienus was killed on the field, and Cn.
Pompeius some days later in flight. Mopping-up operations took some
time, and Caesar remained in Spain till June 45. But, though Sex.
Pompeius held out in hiding, and there was a Pompeian outbreak in
Syria under one Caecilius Bassus, the civil war was over. Caesar did not
publish an estimate of the lives lost in it. Its result had never been a
foregone conclusion; Caesar had repeatedly come near defeat, as he and
his officers admit, and he had more than once acted very rashly. In spite
of their undoubted devotion — not solely due to the fact that he had at
some stage doubled their miserable pay” — his men had sometimes been
mutinous or uncontrollable. But the Fortune he relied on had carried
him through.?!

Caesar spent some time at Narbo Martius in Gaul, and then in
northern Italy, entering Rome only at his triumph in October 45. A
celebration this time frankly over citizens made a bad impression, while
Caesar even let his two legates Fabius and Pedius triumph too, which
was quite irregular.

It was already decided that Caesar would go in person again to the
East to lead a campaign against the Parthians and so avenge Crassus and

65 Dio xuim.28.1.

6 [Caes.} BHisp. 32.

67 [Caes.] BHisp. 29.

8 Plut. Caes. 56. Suet. Iu/. 36 says he considered suicide, thinking all lost.

69 Pliny HN 7.92; but he probably claimed at his triumphs the 1,192,000 other dead in his wars
which Pliny reports.

7 Suet. Iu/. 26.5; the context perhaps suggests the late sos.

1 See the story of him encouraging the crew of a boat ina storm with the words ‘you carry Caesar
and his Fortune’, Plut. Caes. 38.5, App. BCiv. 11.236.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

438 Il. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

his son.72 He may or may not have learnt that they had invaded Syria in
support of the Pompeians. His ultimate plans are unknown, but his army
was to be huge — sixteen legions — and Suetonius reports that he intended
to chastise the Dacians en route, and that he proposed to advance
through Armenia Minor and only join battle after gaining experience of
the enemy’s mode of fighting. To judge by the offices he tied up ahead in
Rome, the campaign was expected to last three years. Cicero later said
that Caesar would never have returned from it, but it was not necessarily
a megalomaniac project doomed to failure; rumours that he intended to
return by southern Russia and Gaul are probably false.”3 Six legions and
other troops were sent ahead to Macedonia, and Caesar was to leave
Rome on 18 March. But his plans were all rendered vain by the
conspirators three days earlier, on the Ides of March.

II. THE DICTATORSHIP

1. The empire

It is impossible today to approach Caesar’s acts in his last years without
some awareness of the different Caesars created by modern scholars.
Perhaps it is unnecessary to go back to the idealized Caesar of Mommsen,
that is, the man who saw in advance that a monarchy was the necessary
cure for Rome’s ills, and became a democratic ruler by overthrowing a
corrupt and arrogant oligarchy — which was identified by the great
liberal scholar with the Prussian Junkers whom he hated.” But the
Caesar of Eduard Meyer, though perhaps no one now would accept him
without reservation, lives on, if often as a model against which to react.’5
Meyer’s Caesar fought selfishly for power, which he intended to
legitimize by becoming another Alexander, ruling as god and king overa
world empire; in fact, thought Meyer, this was a false path, and Augustus
returned to the precedent of Pompey, who kept his power within Roman
and Republican forms. Many scholars accepted this picture, some adding
that Cleopatra had had an important role in converting Caesar to the idea
of Hellenistic kingship.”6 Others, especially in Britain before the Second
World War, denied that there was contemporary evidence to prove that
he wished to be either a king or a god, and argued that the fact that he
became dictator for life, dictator perpetuo, was enough to explain his
assassination; he was a brilliant opportunist, with no long-term plans.”

7 The Parthian War is first mentioned in May 45, Cic. Aft. xiut.27.1, cf. 31.3, though in June
Caesar wrote tht he would stay in Rome, 13.7.

73 App. BCiv. 11.110; Suet. In/. 3; Plut. Caes. 58.2~5. Malitz 1984 (D 279).

74 Mommsen 1888 (A 77). 7 Meyer 1918 (c 227).

% Gelzer 1921/1960 (c 198), the best and most thorough modem study of Caesar, basically takes
this path, but less wholeheartedly in later editions.

7 Adcock 1932 (c 152); Syme 1939 (a 118) (cf. fd. 1938 (Cc 273)), though more concerned with
Caesar’s partisans than Caesar himself.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 439

More recently there have been attempts, sometimes on the basis of the
coins, to show that Caesar did wish to be king, but conceived kingship in
Roman terms, harking back to Romulus or even to the kings of Alba
Longa, descended like Caesar himself from Aeneas; and that he did wish
to be god, but in that too stood largely in the native tradition.”® A
compromise view holds that he was only to bear the title of king outside
Rome, to facilitate his expedition against the Parthians.” Some think
that the explanation of these grandiose plans is that he had succumbed to
megalomania and mental decay.80

His actual measures, more tangible than his final aims, have also been
estimated in different ways. To some, for example, his extension of
privileges to new classes is simply an easy and sometimes lucrative
method of rewarding adherents. Others have taken his words about
‘tranquillity for Italy, peace for the provinces and security for the
empire’®! as showing a conscious intention to abolish the last vestiges of
city-state institutions and mentality at Rome and embark ona course that
would in the end bring Italians and provincials into full equality with the
inhabitants of the capital. And were his other social and administrative
measures simply attempts to meet immediate problems and remedy
crying abuses, or was there a wider vision that informed all he did?

The material on which we must base a decision is, given the quantity
of evidence for the period, surprisingly unsatisfactory. Caesar’s own
writings come to an end, and various sayings attributed to him may not
be genuine.82 Cicero was so obsessed with Caesar’s increasingly cavalier
way with Republican forms that he seems never to have tried to
understand his measures.®3 The fullest account of the honours that he
received comes from the much later historian Dio, whose sources are
uncertain and who has been extensively disbelieved.®4 The coin types
have been shown conclusively to be a broken reed in establishing
Caesar’s attitude to kingship and godhead.®5 It is often impossible to tell
if a Lex Iulia or a colonia Iulia is owed to Caesar or his adopted son
Augustus. After Caesar’s death Antony passed various measures which
he said that Caesar had planned, leaving drafts in his papers, but
Antony’s assertion was greeted with considerable scepticism.®® The
inscriptional evidence is fragmentary and hard to interpret, and has not

78 Esp. Alfdldi (c 153-4, 158-9), Weinstock 1971 (H 134).

79 Oppermann 1958 (C 234).

8% Notably Collins, 1955 (c 186).

81 Caes. BCiv. 111.57; cf. esp. Vittinghoff 1952 (a 122).

82 E.g. those retailed by Ampius Balbus, a violent Pompeian, Suet. Iu/. 77; and is it true (Cic. Of.
111.82) that Caesar often quoted Euripides on the attractions of tyrannic power?

83 And came to believe that Caesar had planned to become master of Rome from the time of his
aedileship in 66 (letter ap. Suet. Iu/. 9.2); though regrum is a vague word.

& The view that he represents the Livian tradition is unfounded; Manuwald 1979 (8 70) shows
this for the triumviral and Augustan periods at least.

85 Kraay 1954 (B 181). % Aft. xiv.12.1, Phil. 1.2, 16 etc.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

440 Il. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

increased substantially of late years. The dates of many measures are also
uncertain, and thus it is hard to trace any development of policy. Some
things we must reconcile ourselves to not knowing; with others, we
must content ourselves with a measure of probability.

We may begin by considering Caesar’s attitude to the empire as a
whole and the provinces individually. First of all, it must be insisted that
‘tranquillity for Italy, peace for the provinces and security for the empire’
is not a political programme; it is what Caesar, when trying to negotiate
before Pharsalus, tells Metellus Scipio will automatically occur if the war
comes to an end. On the other hand, Caesar had spent the last decade out
of Rome, and it is very possible that he had imbibed in Gaul a sense of the
pettiness of the political squabbles in the capital, and saw things from an
imperial perspective. He had in earlier years taken his stand on the old
popularis plank of clean provincial government, a good base from which
to attack the optimates. It is thus not surprising that he, and the authors
of the Corpus Caesarianum, make much of the extortion and cruelty of
Republican leaders in the war. No doubt they exaggerate; for his part,
Caesar had acquired immense wealth in Gaul (if mainly from booty, seen
as legitimate), and indeed according to some had been extortionate in
Spain after his praetorship, owing to his need to pay his debts.8” But
perhaps a reputation for sympathy towards provincials played some part
in the desertions to his side which he and his officers assert were so
frequent; the Bellum Africanum interestingly says that the citizens of
Utica favoured him because they had benefited from the Lex Iulia,
probably the measure of 59 for the control of senatorial officials.88

Not that all Caesar’s appointments to provincial governorships were
of high quality. The disastrous Q. Cassius, already seen in charge of
Further Spain in 48, was drowned with his extorted wealth after his
recall.89 M. Lepidus (in Citerior in 48-47) got home safely with his.%
Sallust is said to have behaved ill in the new province of Africa Nova,
though he was subsequently exonerated by Caesar and himself insists
that he never succumbed to avaritia.°! But Caesar began the war with an
unsatisfactory lot of subordinates, and to gain better was probably one
motive for his clementia. In 46 M. Brutus, in spite of the Salamis affair (ch.
15, P- §94) an honourable man, governed Cisalpine Gaul. And Ser.
Sulpicius Rufus, lawyer and philhellene, who in Rome had been a
cautious reformer, agreed to take Achaea (Greece), gloomy as he was

87 Suet. Tul. 54.1.

88 [Caes.] BA/fr. 87.

89 (Caes.] BALex. 64.

% Dio xLu1.1.3.

% Dio xxu1.9.2, Sall. Cat. 3.4. But Dio x111.47.4 says that in 45 Caesar released some who were
about to be found guilty of taking bribes (and so was charged with taking bribes himself).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 441

over the political situation.®? The younger Servilius Isauricus was in Asia
from 46 to 44, and though honorary inscriptions by provincials prove
little, there is such a spate of them expressing gratitude to Servilius that
he must at least have been energetic.°3 Caesar refused on the other hand
to give L. Minucius Basilus a province; we happen to know the man was
abominably cruel.%

In Greece, Caesar had had contacts since his unsuccessful prosecution,
in the 70s, of two senators for extortion. In the late 50s he had given cities
there, as in Asia and elsewhere, generous gifts out of his Gallic booty.
No wonder that he sent legates from Epirus in 48 to try to detach it from
Pompey, though Athens in fact refused to come over and a legate even
sold the Megarians as slaves (though primarily as a demonstration, at
low prices and to their kin) on account of their resistance. After
Pharsalus Caesar returned their freedom to the cities of Thessaly to mark
his victory. Soon he put in briefly to Asia. He might have punished the
communities which had supported Pompey, though they had had little
choice. Instead, he was generous, remitting part of the direct tax and,
significantly, allowing the cities themselves, instead of the hated pubii-
cani, to collect it.°7 From roughly this period date a number of honorary
inscriptions from various parts of the Greek world, greeting him as
saviour and benefactor.°8 At Ephesus, where he says he arrived just in
time to save the temple treasures from a Pompeian legate, the communi-
ties of Asia voted to build a monument to him as descendant of Ares, god
manifest and saviour of mankind. He gave special honours to certain
cities. Ilium, which had received favours from an earlier member of the
family, had its freedom and immunity confirmed and lands given it by

92 Sulpicius’ gloom, Cic. Fam. 1v.3 (with Caesar’s respect for his integrity and wisdom); 1v.4, he
regrets taking the job. Achaea had previously been attached to Macedonia; perhaps Caesar thought
it required special temporary attention, rather than permanent separation. Note also Pansa sent to
Bithynia in 45; a bouquet to his humanity, Fam. xv.17.3, cf. 19.2; respected by Caesar, vi.12.2.

%3 See Magie 1950 (A 67) 1 416-17, 1 1270-1. Cicero notes Fam. x111.68 that Asia had suffered
severely. At Pergamum he ‘restored ancient laws and a democracy subject to none’ IGRR tv 433; (cf.
RDGE 53, letter to the Pergamenes about the temple of Asclepius). Ephesus worshipped him
together with Rome; Aegae was ‘saved’ by him; Magnesia received benefits, sbid. 1178, I Magnesia
142. In fact in 61~6o he had joined with Cato in trying to protect ‘free’ cities against the publicani,
Alt. 1.19.9, 20.4, I.1.10.

% Dio xx111.47.5, App. BCiv. 111.98; he gave Basilus money instead. A law of 46 limiting
praetorian governors to one year and consular to two was probably as Dio xLit1.25.3 says to prevent
the amassing of excessive influence, but may not have been as bad for the provincials as sometimes
thought; a Roman governor hardly needed to be an expert on his area. (The Lex Pompeia of 52 was
disregarded: Girardet 1987 (c 203).)

98 Suet. Iu/. 28.1; W. Ameling, Herodes Atticus (Hildesheim, 1983) 1 7. His fifty talents to Athens
for a new market exactly balanced Pompey’s earlier largesse. % Dio xii1.14.3-4.

37 Embassies, App. BCiv, 11.89; tax of Asia, Dio xxt1.6,3 (but he did levy contributions) App.
BCiv. v.4. Opinions differ as to whether the publicani lost the direct taxes in other provinces; they
continued to collect indirect taxes. For generous tax arrangements in Judaea, Joseph. Aj x1v.201ff
(none in Sabbatical year).

9 Raubitschek 1954 (B 223); Robert 1955 (B 230). % Caes. BCiv. 111.105.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

442 11. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

the descendant of Trojan Aeneas — or, as Strabo thinks, the admirer of
Alexander.!© Perhaps now he restored its freedom to Pergamum, and
was even generous to Mytilene, which had been closely bound to
Pompey. Plutarch says he freed Cnidus as a favour to his friend
Theopompus.!! At some point he dedicated a golden Eros at the famous
sanctuary of his ancestress Aphrodite at Aphrodisias in Caria; Octavian’s
patronage of the city was probably inherited.!°

After Pharsalus Caesar may have believed that the war was almost
over, and that he could thus afford to be generous. After Zela, when he
was again in Asia, he knew this was not so, and he made up for his earlier
leniency, by, according to Dio, extracting vast sums of money from all
the states, though violence and cruelty were perhaps not employed.!% It
is difficult to estimate how damaging to the provinces the civil wars
were; perhaps very damaging.!% Almost all areas were involved. They
had to produce, often for both sides in turn, not only money, but
supplies and manpower, especially cavalry, and sometimes ships; a few
wilder areas may have sent willing mercenaries. The economy might be
disrupted; merchant shipping was seized for use as transports, and we are
told that little grain was harvested in the great corn-exporting province
of Africa in 47-46 as the Pompeians had conscripted the farmers.!05
Immunity to enslavement did not extend to foreigners, as the fate of the
Megarians shows; and a citizen of Cyzicus records a dream that he had
about a friend who had been enslaved while fighting at sea for Caesar at
the time of his African campaign.!0%

Caesar did not reward any of the Greek cities of the East with Roman
citizenship or with Latin status (which meant that in time the whole
ruling class would acquire the citizenship through holding office; and
which, since the enfranchisement of the Transpadane Latins, may have
seemed like a promise of ultimate enfranchisement for all); they might in
fact not have welcomed it. Caesar did however at the end of his life give
or intend to give Latin status to all Sicily, which was largely Greek-
speaking; Roman and Italian settlement was confined to a few places.!97
But the Greek cities of southern Italy had been enfranchised in 89; while
geographers regarded Sicily as originally part of the peninsula.!08 And he

100 Strab. x11.594-5. According to Lucan Phars. 1x.961 Caesar visited it.

101 Pergamum SIG} 763, RDGE 54, 55; Mytilene, RDGE 26; Cnidus, Plut. Caes. 48. In 45-44
B.c. he enlarged the asylum at the temple of Apollo at Didyma, OGIS 473 (with Magie 1950 (A 67)
1271). 102 Reynolds 1982 (B 226) no. 8.

103 Dio. xiu1.49. He also regulated the affairs of many kings and dynasts.

104 F. Millar, ‘Empire and City, Augustus to Julian’, JRS 73 (1983) 76-96.

105 [Caes.] BAfr. 20.

106 IGRR tv 135. But M. Stlaccius M.f. was presumably a citizen, and so wrongfully enslaved ~a
common enough event.

107 Cic. Att. xiv.12.2, Antony wished to upgrade it to citizen status; but even Latinitas was
revoked, as many peregrine towns are found later, Pliny HN 111.88-91. 108 Strab. 1.60 etc.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 443

was generous to individual Greeks, not only to those resident in Italy, as
presumably the 500 enrolled at Novum Comum had mostly been, and to
the doctors and teachers settling in Rome to whom he gave citizenship in
his last years, but also to various figures prominent in the East. We hear,
largely by chance, of several cases of such men. It was probably in
Caesar’s time, not as usually thought in the triumviral period, that the
rule enunciated by Cicero, but often ignored, that it was impossible to
hold the Roman and another citizenship simultaneously, fell into
complete desuetude, and grants began to specify that beneficiaries were
still liable to duties and eligible to office in their home towns.!!0

It is in the West that Caesar’s grants of privilege were most significant,
and are most disputed. In 49, by a Lex Roscia, Caesar gave full
citizenship to the Latin colonies beyond the Po, whose cause he had so
long championed and which had provided material support and man-
power for the Gallic War.!!! This will have meant the end of Pompey’s
clientela here. Although many of the new citizens were Gallic by race, the
area had long been considered geographically part of Italy, though in
fact Caesar left Cisalpine Gaul as a province, perhaps because he wanted
an army close to Italy. In any event, the Lex Roscia provided no real
precedent for giving the citizenship in the same year to the Punic city of
Gades in Further Spain, an old ally of Rome.!!2 Caesar had reformed (and
de-Punicized, probably by eradicating child sacrifice) the city’s laws
when governor of Ulterior in 61—6o, and it was the home of his trusted
agent Balbus; it had expelled Varro’s garrison. What were his motives? It
would be easier to say if we knew whether he gave citizenship or Latin
tights at the same time to any other towns, or whether Gades was an
isolated case.

But after Munda, says Dio, while Caesar confiscated territory from or
imposed fines on communities in Further Spain that had supported the
Pompeians, those which had been loyal got land and immunity from
taxation, or the citizenship, or ‘to be considered as colonists’ — but had to
pay for it. (Caesar even removed the dedications from the temple of
Hercules in Gades, so great was his need for money.)''3 In fact we do not

109 Plut. Caes. 29.2; Suet. In/. 42.1; Cic, Fam. xitt.35; Strab. v.213. Individual grants, Cic. Phil.
x11. 33, SIG3. 761¢ Plut. Cie. 24, Cic. Fam. x111.36; Joseph. AJ x1v.137. We do not hear of a law
allowing Caesar to enfranchise groups or individuals, but he probably had one passed at some point.
Some got the citizenship corruptly via his friends, and so the lists had to be revised, Cic. Fam.
XIII. 36.

1t0 Rawson 1985 (c 248) 56.

11 Dio xx1.36.3. Perhaps the Lex Roscia relative to Cisalpine Gaul passed on 11 March of some
year, mentioned in Frag. Atest., FIRA 20 line 14.

"2 Dio xxt.41.24.1, Livy Epit. cx. Saumagne 1965 (F 138) 71 wrongly argued that Caesar merely
gave the town Latin rights and it was made a Roman municipium by Augustus, who certainly seems
to have been in some way responsible for this title. Caes. BCyv. 11.21 is unfortunately vague. But
[Cic.] Fam. x.32.3 (IVviri and numerous equites in 43 B.c.) is conclusive.

3 Dio xLu1.39.4-5-

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

444 II. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

know which, if any, native towns were given full citizenship'!* — some
think Dio is speaking loosely of grants to individuals; while it is not clear
whether, in talking of colonists, he means that the towns became titular
Latin colonies, or that some loyal Spaniards were enrolled, in accordance
with tradition, as full citizens in the Roman colonies made up of veterans
of the legions or civilians from Rome (to which we shall come). By the
middle of Augustus’ reign there were certainly a fair number of native
towns with either citizen or Latin status, especially in the Baetis valley in
Further Spain, as Pliny the Elder in particular makes clear;!'5 although
some of them were insignificant places, and probably little Romanized.
But was this the work of Caesar or his successor? Augustus was to
become cautious in extending citizenship to peregrini; but probably not
until after the triumviral period, and indeed he seems to have given Latin
rights in Spain later.1'6 It has been suggested that all the towns
mentioned by Pliny or elsewhere that had ‘flowery’ titles, made up of the
adjective ‘Julian’ and some virtue or quality, were given either citizen-
ship or Latin status by Caesar, and this might seem likely for Ulia Iulia
Fidentia, for example, which had stood by him loyally in 45; but some
‘flowery’ titles were certainly conferred by Augustus.!!7

The old province of Gallia Transalpina provides similar problems. A
number of towns, such as Nemausus (Nimes) were Latin by the early
first century A.D., but we cannot be sure that this was Caesar’s work,
though the hypothesis seems to have hardened into a dogma. Archaeolo-
gical evidence suggests that the Romanization of native communities
had not advanced far, though there was some Hellenization in the area
around Massilia. The legion, known as the Alaudae or Larks, that Caesar
had raised from natives in the province was however certainly enfran-
chised.!18 A few Gallic magnates from the Transalpina had already been
given the citizenship, by Pompey or even earlier; Caesar certainly made
such grants, and one or two true Gauls from the region were possibly
even put into the Senate,'!° as the younger L. Cornelius Balbus of Gades
certainly was (Cicero shuddered at the mere thought of his uncle’s
elevation).!20 But anti-Caesarian invective treated scions of settler

114 Probably Olisipo (Lisbon), according to Vittinghoff 195 2 (a 122) 78, but see Brunt 1971 (a 16)
238, who however notes various possible names.

5 Pliny HN 111.7ff; his sources are mid-Augustan.

6 For discussion see Henderson 1942 (c 212), Vittinghoff 1952 (A 122), Galsterer 1971 (E 15),
Hoyos 1979 (£ 19).

"7 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 250 is cautious, arguing many of the towns had been Pompeian and would
not have been favoured by Caesar.

18 Suet. In/. 24.2; cf. Cic. Pdi/. 1.20 cf. 13.3, who professes to expect they will get on to the jury
lists at Rome.

119 It is difficult to identify individuals. Wiseman 1971 (A 130) 23 suggests T. Carisius, monetalis
¢.45, of Avennio (Avignon); but he, like a man from Narbo, may be of settler stock. Cie. Fam. 1x.
15.2 suggests some sort of Transalpine presence at Rome.

120 Suet. Ini. 44. Cic. Att. xv1.8.2. The elder Balbus was in fact consul in qo, but possibly not in the
Senate before that.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 445

families as wild barbarians — Cicero calls L. Decidius Saxa a ‘wild
Celtiberian’, but, though he came from Spain, he was probably of
settler stock, since he had a good Italian name and served as an officer in
Caesar’s army.!2! Jokes about Gauls from the newly conquered province
laying aside their trousers for the senator’s tunic with broad purple stripe
and asking their way to the senate-house are simply jokes;!22 and no
Greeks seem to have been put in the Senate. In fact Dio does not mention
provincials among the unsuitable persons Caesar was thought to have
honoured thus.!23

Some natives, perhaps often Aybridae of only partly Roman descent
(and so peregrine status) were doubtless, as we noted, included in citizen
colonies. After the battle of Thapsus Caesar probably began to settle
some of his veterans at colonies at Curubis and Carpis on the African
coast.!24 After Munda two and probably more colonies were planted in
Provence, certainly Arelate (Arles) for the Sixth legion, Narbo Martius
(Narbonne — already a colony) for the Tenth.!25 If there were veterans
settled in Spain too, perhaps the Roman colonies at Tarraco and
Carthago Nova, on the east coast, which are called Iulia Victrix, were for
such, and at least planned by Caesar.!26 But he did also settle large
numbers of the urban populace of Rome overseas, sometimes at least in
places to which he also sent veterans. Hispalis (Seville), certainly
founded by him,!2? is called Iu/ia Romula, which perhaps suggests its
colonists were largely urban; so clearly were those of Urso, colonia
Genetiva Urbanorum (if this title is correctly transmitted), for which by
luck we have part of the foundation charter, asserting that the settlement
was made by Caesar’s order but in accordance with a law of Antony.!28

121 Cic. Phil. xt.12, X111.27. Syme 1937 (C 271).

122 Suet. Iu/. 76.3, 80.2. ‘Gallic’ senators might be thoroughly Romanized Cisalpines. The known
Cisalpine senators however, such as the poet Helvius Cinna, from Brixia, may be of Italian settler
descent.

123 Dio xii 47.3 (plain soldiers and sons of freedmen).

124 Curubis, CIL 12788 (a freedman IIvir before Caesar’s death); Carpis, ILS 9367. Teutsch 1962
(E 29) 108, 160.

125 Suet. Tib. 4 says Caesar’s follower Ti. Nero founded colonies ‘including Arelate and Narbo’ in
Gaul; Lepidus perhaps raised a third veteran legion there after Caesar’s death, which would imply a
third colony. Forum Iulii, perhaps not a colony till after Actium, probably owed its existence as a
town to Caesar (attested in 43, Cic. Fam. x.15.3). Further urbanization is possible; the native
Lutevani Foroneronienses, Pliny HN 3.37, perhaps owed their existence as a town (forum) to Ti.
Nero.

126 Celsa (Iulia Victrix Lepida), up the Ebro, perhaps founded by Lepidus on Caesar’s plan, as the
name suggests.

127 [sid. Orig. 15.1.71 — the Bishop of Seville should have known who founded the town.
Henderson 1942 (c 212) however thinks the title Romula points to Augustus. Livy xxxrv. 9 shows
Caesar sent some Roman colonists to Emporiae (Ampurias) after Munda, but that the town was not
organized formally as a colony at this stage.

12 Pliny HN 1.12; FIR A 21, esp. ch. 104. Note also the prominent role of Caesar’s ancestress
Venus. The inscription dates from the Flavian period and some changes seem to have been made in
the original charter. See Hardy 1912 (B 169) for discussion and translation. A veteran IIvir, CIL II
1404 (centurion of Legio xxx) may be one of the first magistrates.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

446 II. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

The fact that freedmen are permitted to hold office, as they were in most
or all of Caesar’s other colonies, but not, as far as we know, in Roman
towns founded earlier or later, is noteworthy;!2° but there is nothing else
at all popularis in the constitution — the council is firmly in charge, and the
assembly has nothing to do but elect the magistrates.

Caesar’s grandest project was the revival of Corinth and Carthage
with the titles Laus Iulia and Concordia Iulia, certainly mainly for
freedmen and other civilians. They had not got far at his death.1 And
indeed other places were still waiting at this time for their colonists,
many of whom were gathered in Rome in anticipation of the journey. A
number of colonies were founded abroad in the next few years by all the
triumvirs, it is usually supposed often or always in accordance with
Caesar’s plans.!3! It is not clear how Suetonius reached his figure of
80,000 (perhaps from the city of Rome alone) for those who left Italy to
settle abroad.132

Of course there was some precedent for Caesar’s colonizing activities.
A few towns in Spain and elsewhere had been founded for veterans or
immigrants even in the second century, and other ex-soldiers had settled
down in small groups in the provinces where they had served, or where
they had in some cases perhaps even been born of settler families.
Informal organizations, conventus, of Romans sometimes seem even to
have dominated the native towns where they congregated. And Caius
Gracchus had proposed colonies overseas for the urban plebs, and
Saturninus for veterans. It has been said that Caesar was “encouraging
and organizing ona large scale a natural movement which until his time
had been held back by artificial political restraints based on prejudice’.
But he dammed it more firmly too, by enacting that no Italian between
twenty and forty years of age should spend more than three years abroad
unless on military service. 133

Probably one motive for Caesar’s foreign colonization was simply the
near-exhaustion of the supply of ager publicus in Italy, and a desire to spare
the peninsula, and the upper class there that he was courting, too much
of the confiscation that had made Sulla so hated. (Senators’ estates were
probably supposed to be in Italy, though others might own land

129 FIRA 21.cv. Freedmen in office at Curubis, CIL I? 788, Carthage and Clupea CIL x 6104;
freedmen settled in Corinth, Strab. vit. 381, cf. Crinagoras Anthol. Graec. 1x.284.

130 Carthage, Strab. xvi1.833, included some veterans, cf. Plut. Caes. 57. App. Lib. 136 is
contradictory, bur it seems likely that the colony was planned by Caesar and started soon after his
death, though there were later reorganizations and reinforcements. Corinth, veterans and freedmen,
Strab. viit.381, Plut. Caes. 57. Coins show it was founded by 44. Dio xim.s0 says Caesar was
especially proud of these two.

‘3! Were Lugdunum (Lyons) and Raurica, near Basle, which were founded by Munatius Plancus
in 43, planned by Caesar as many think? Grant 1946 (c 204) expands the number of colonies attested
by dubious appeal to the coins. 132 Suet. Iu/. 42.1.

133 Levick 1967 (D 275) 4; Suet. Iu/. 42.1, doubted by Yavetz, 1983 (C 290) 115.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 447

abroad.)!34 It has often been thought, however, that Caesar wanted to
Romanize the provinces. But there were also colonies to the Greek East,
which was not Romanizable — apart from Corinth, both Lampsacus and
Sinope are certainties,!55 others were probably at least projected; in fact
the colonies there became gradually Hellenized. In general, colonization
was at the expense of the natives, most of whom would lose their land,
and sink to mere inco/ae, inhabitants without political rights, of the town
where they had been citizens; they would hardly be grateful for the long-
term opportunity to become Romanized. In some cases the old colonial
function of providing a garrison may have been kept in mind — the
charter of Urso gives regulations for mobilization!» — but an attempt to
argue that the eastern foundations were meant as bases for the Parthian
War is not convincing.'3? Certainly the new colonies will have been
centres of loyalty to Caesar in the provinces; though the formal patron at
Urso is to be the actual deductor, the inhabitants would be kept aware of
what they owed to Caesar himself, whose name was evoked in the very
title of the town. But often the actual site must have depended simply on
whether there was land available, either as existing ager publicus, or ready
for confiscation from the disloyal. Caesar promised to cancel the
projected colony at Buthrotum in Epirus because Atticus and Cicero
made representations on behalf of the Buthrotans, who were simply
being punished for not paying their taxes.!38 Occasionally a depopulated -
area may have been consciously reinforced; and it can hardly be doubted
that the revival of Carthage and Corinth by colonists among whom
freedmen were prominent would stimulate trade, especially as Caesar
intended to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth (though what is
mentioned in that context are strategic motives).!3° Parts of the western
Mediterranean coast, notably Numidia, entered the Roman monetary
system for the first time in these years, but apparently by the accident of
heavy coinage in these areas for the payment of armies.!40

In any event, can a man as intelligent as Caesar have been blind to the
far-reaching implications of his actions, whatever his actual motives
were in extending privileges among the natives and settling citizens in
new colonies, and whatever the exact scale of his innovations? One
wonders; the ancients were strikingly averse to long-term political

'¥ Rawson, in Finley 1976 (G 67) go.

1388 Appian BCiv. v.137; Strab. x11.546. Perhaps just settlers, not a real colony? New era begins
shortly before Caesar’s death. He does not seem to have founded new Greek cities, unlike Pompey.

136 FIRA 21 CIII. [Sall.] Ep. 11.5.8 says colonies of old and new citizens will increase military
resources; for this work see below.

137 Boegli 1966 (c 176). 138 Cic. Alt. xvi.16.

19 Suet. Iw/. 44.3, Plut. Caes. 58. This is one of the ‘final plans’ that have been disbelieved, but
Plutarch is circumstantial, giving us the name of the man in charge of the project.

4% Crawford 1985 (B 145) 247-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

448 11. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

projections. It is particularly frustrating that there is so much dispute
over the pamphlet known as Sallust’s Second Letter to Caesar, ostensibly a
letter of advice from the future historian written in 50. Many scholars
regard it as a later rhetorical exercise by an unknown author. If, even so,
one could be sure that it was based on ideas of the time it would be
important, fot it urges Caesar to rehabilitate the decadent citizen body by
a programme of generous enfranchisements.'41 Such enfranchisements
will ease recruiting; new and old citizens are to be settled together in
colonies.!42 If such ideas were in the air, it is unlikely that Caesar was
acting entirely ad hoc. He must also have seen that every citizen living in
the provinces made the power of the assemblies at Rome more illogical.
But one could still argue that he handed out privileges for badly needed
cash, as Dio implies for Spain, and to reward those loyal to himself as
generously as he felt Caesar should. If we know anything of his character
it is that he carried to extreme lengths the Roman aristocrat’s sense of
obligation to those who helped him, whoever they might be. Numerous
anecdotes illustrate this trait in him.!43 Conversely, disloyalty in reci-
pients of his beneficia was unpardonable; he is said to have extended
clemency to opponents a second time only if his friends interceded for
them, and never to have forgiven mutiny in his troops.'#4 Yet it is not
clear that he was deeply indebted to Sicily, for example; though there too
a practical motive — to encourage those so largely responsible for
provisioning Rome — can be found. A firm conclusion is unattainable.

2. Italy

Meyer thought Caesar had little cHiente/a in Italy; but he is often believed
to have possessed, as the heir of Marius and the popu/ares, great support
especially in Etruria and Samnium, and to have been anxious to see that
the whole of Italy was reconciled to Rome and its representatives
brought into public life at the capital. The truth, however, seems to be
less clear-cut. There was, we saw, little resistance to Caesar in Italy in 49,
especially once he had reassured the towns about his intentions as to life
and property, and he was able to tell the Massiliots that they should
follow the auctoritas of all Italy in admitting him.'45 If we may trust
Cicero, however, five years later there was rejoicing in the towns at his
assassination.!46 What had happened in the interval?

No doubt Caesar had inherited influence in some parts of Italy; and his

141 [Sall.] Ep. 11.5.7.

42 [Sall.] Ep. 11.5.8. Some think this refers only to the grant to the Transpadanes, but old and new
citizens are to go together to colonies, and why should Transpadanes emigrate?

143 See esp. Suet. Iu/. 71~2. 14 Suet. Iul. 67.
45 Caes. BCiv 1.35, cf. 111.12.2, Apollonia will not act ‘against the decision of all Italy and the
Roman people’; also 11.32.2. “46 Cic. Aft. xiv.6.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 449

defence of a proscribed Samnite in his youth may be significant. We have
seen that from Gaul he sent money to adorn Italian towns, and in 49 he
complained to men from Corfinium and the neighbouring municipia who
surrendered to him that by joining his enemies they had forgotten his
beneficia.'47 But it is a mistake to see Etruria as solid for him (or Picenum
for Pompey); Sulla will have left his partisans in control of the towns,
and there were senators of Etruscan background in his Senate; later the
aristocratic A. Caecina fought for Pompey, though among the pro-
scribed whom Caesar rehabilitated there may have been a number of
Etruscans.'48 Unfortunately we do not know where in Italy Caesar’s
estates lay (as opposed to three holiday villas).'49 His tribe was the Fabia,
however, and one may imagine split loyalties among the people of Alba
Fucens, which belonged to it too, but was held for a while by Domitius
Ahenobarbus (another member of the tribe).'5° Thereafter, if not before,
Caesar was the regular patron of Alba as doubtless of many other towns;
we know of Vibo in the south and Bovianum in Samnium. From others
we have dedicatory inscriptions.'5! It is likely that he tried to extend his
Italian chente/a as much as possible; he could intervene to get a partisan
into a local council.'52 It is clear from their names that many of Caesar’s
officers, and doubtless other ranks too, came from an Italian back-
ground; but it is not obvious that, if we knew as much about Pompey’s
army as we do about Caesar’s, we should find the picture very different;
recruits were normally countrymen, and parts of old Italy had strong
military traditions. None the less, the undoubted devotion of Caesar’s
men will have affected their friends at home; and centurions at least were
often, or might become, men of some local position and influence.
Most of the legionaries themselves did not go home, but some
received land in Italy from 47 on, perhaps in accordance with a Lex
Tulia.153 But this of course cut both ways where Caesar’s popularity was
concerned. Dio makes Caesar tell the mutinous troops in 47 that he
would settle them individually on his own estates and land purchased,
not confiscated (there was, we recall, little ager pub/icus left in Italy).154 He

147 Caes. BCiv. 1.23. 148 Rawson 1978 (c 246).

49 Wiseman 1971 (A 130) 191, 194, 196. 150 Ibid. 43.

151 Alba, ILLRP 1255, De Visscher 1964 (c 189); Vibo (46 8.c.) and Bovianum Undecimanorum
CUILLRP 406; the name suggests veterans here), see Bitto 1970 (c 175). ILLRP 407, dedication to
Caesar from Brundisium. Two inscriptions mention statues set up to Caesar after his death by a Lex
Rufrena (ILLRP qo9, with comm.) usually thought to date from 42, but possibly from early 44,
when Dio says Caesar was voted the right to have statues ‘in the cities’. A Rufrenus with Lepidus in
43, Cic. Fam. x.21.4.

182 ILLRP 630: decurioni [be ]neficio dei Caesaris.

183 The late Liber coloniarum names various places where veterans were settled /ege Iulia,
apparently meaning Caesar’s, but there is the law of 59 to reckon with.

14 Dio xxit 54.1; cf. App. BCw. 11.94; Suet. Iu/. 38.1; Dio xi111.47.4 (Caesar auctions ager publicus,
even consecrated lands, to raise money in 43).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

450 II. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

does seem to have tried to avoid the dislocation and hostility caused by
Sulla’s settlements, drafting the veterans mostly in small groups, perhaps
sometimes a cohort at a time, to different places, and leaving the existing
municipal framework intact, where Sulla had sometimes at least given
the old inhabitants status inferior to that of his colonists. The numbers
settled now were perhaps not vast; a maximum of 15,000 has been
suggested.!55 But Caesar could not completely avoid offence. Appian
makes Brutus say later that there had been confiscations without
compensation even from innocent persons;'*6 Cicero thought he might
lose his property at Tusculum,!5’7 and while the lands of Arretium and
Volaterrae in Etruria had been confiscated by Sulla but never divided,
and so were legally ager publicus available for distribution, in practice the
old inhabitants had continued to occupy them and now complained at
being turned out: a friend of Cicero’s from Volaterrae, C. Curtius,
actually one of Caesar’s new senators, was in danger of thus losing his
property.!58 Some erosion of Caesar’s Etruscan support in this way is
likely. Even if a town was spared settlement nearby, it might draw rents
from threatened land elsewhere, as Atella did from Cisalpine Gaul;
Cicero also tried to intervene on Atella’s behalf with one of the senatorial
deductores, though he dared not do such things often.!59

Much of the settlement however appears to have been in Campania,
where Antony and Octavian in 43 could call on so many Caesarian
veterans: notably at Casilinum (for the Eighth legion) and Calatia (for
the Seventh); probably also in Samnium, and possibly Picenum,!6
Cicero notes that surveyers were active quite near Rome, at Veii and
Capena. We are told that Caesar planned to drain the Pomptine Marshes
and the Fucine Lake, which would have given more land for distribu-
tion.!61 The allotments were made inalienable for twenty years (a
provision repealed after Caesar’s death to please the colonists).!©2 There
is no evidence that civilians were given land in Italy.

There may have been some connexion between the drafting of
veterans to existing towns and the probable reorganization of local
government in Italy. The literary sources are not interested in this, and
the epigraphic ones are puzzling. However, it seems from a passage of

'5S Brunt 1971 (A 16) 319; Keppie 1983 (A 56) 50. Dio xii1.5 4.1, the veterans were scattered so as
not to terrorize their neighbours or organize rebellion.

186 App. BCiv. 111.139-41. Dio xi11.51.2 shows some land of Pompeians was confiscated, see also
Lut1.47.4, App. BCiv. tt.1 40.

157 Cic. Fam. 1x.17. 88 Cic. Fam. x1t1.4.5.

159 Cic. Fam. xut.7 — the official had already exempted lands nearby owned by the town of
Rhegium Lepidum; cf. ibid. 8.

1© Keppie 1983 (A 56) 49ff; he holds the activity near Capua was on Calatian territory, as Capuan
territory was exhausted, 57. Cales, Teanum, Minturnae possible sites, 53, 142. Cic. Fam. 1x.17.

161 Suet. Iu/. 44.3. The main object of the new road over the Apennines to the Adriatic is not
wholly clear, ibid. 162 App. BCiv. 111.7, by Cassius.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 451

Cicero which mentions asking Balbus about its provisions that there was
in preparation in 45 a general law regulating, inter alia no doubt,
eligibility for local office (active praecones, heralds or auctioneers, are
barred, retired ones not). And Cicero’s son and nephew had held office in
Arpinum in 46 apparently to reorganize the town.!63 The law may also
have extended local self-government to small places hitherto without it
(subject for jurisdiction to a praefectus sent from Rome or dependent ona
bigger neighbour). And parts of Italy organized as pagi or cantons were
gradually becoming urbanized in the second and first centuries,
especially after the Social War: the agrarian law of 59 may have involved
Caesar in the process. What is usually known as the Lex Mamilia Roscia
Peducaea Alliena Fabia, perhaps a follow-up passed by five tribunes
friendly to the ‘triumvirs’ in 55 B.c., if not to be identified with the Lex
Iulia agraria of 59 itself, is a document from which we have extracts,
concerned with founding, and delimiting the territories of, urban
communities of all kinds.'6¢ The idea that until Caesar’s time local
magistrates had no powers of jurisdiction is untenable, but their rights
may have needed regulation elsewhere as well as in newly enfranchised
Cisalpine Gaul, where there was also the governor’s power to be
considered (and where what was perhaps a Lex Rubria, Caesarian or a
little later in date, in fact excluded the latter by reserving certain actions
for the praetor in Rome).'65 We also have a curious inscription from
Heraclea, once a Greek city, which may represent sections from recent
legislation which the town thought relevant to itself, even though as
they stand some are obviously applicable only to Rome (e.g. provisions
for cleaning the streets there, and for the corn-distributions).!6 Other
sections, however, regulate local registration for the census (usually
thought not to be completely new in the first century B.C.) and eligibility
to local office — proof of military service is required; grave-diggers,
actors, pimps and of course praecones are excluded, but apparently not
freedmen; on the other hand those who have received a reward for
killing a proscribed man are barred, and this might suggest that the
document is pre-Caesarian, since not many such men will have been still

163 Cic. Fam. vt.18.1, X101.11.3, constituendi municipi causa. ILS 5406 records an imperial magistrate
at Patavium holding office in accordance with a Lex lulia, but this might be due to Augustus, or only
local in application.

16 FIRA 12. Hinrichs 1969 (c 213), dates it to 49, Supposing the proposers were praetors that
year, but we then have more than the proper number attested, and legislation by a plurality of
tribunes is attested, of praetors not.

165 Frederiksen 1965 (B 153); Bruna 1972 (B 138) Laffi 1986 (B 186), on the Lex Rubria (the Veleia
fragment, FIR A 19 is probably rightly identified with this law, which it mentions, perhaps also the
smaller Ateste fragment, FIRA 20). The governor is not mentioned, but Gallia Cisalpina is — the
province was abolished in 42.

16 FIRA 13. The dating to the period of Caesar’s dictatorship is very far from certain, Brunt
1971 (A 16) 519-23.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

452 II. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

alive in the late forties.!6’ It is hard then to be sure what Caesar did in this
field; but he may have thrown himself into work which was already
under way and indeed needed doing. Dio says that he prided himself on
rebuilding or actually founding many cities in Italy as well as beyond
it.168 The effect of reorganization and settlement must have been to
promote uniformity and mix the population, and to create gratitude as
well as grievances. .

There was other legislation that affected Italy; we are told that one-
third of shepherds employed were to be free men, a precaution against
the endemic slave unrest on the drove-roads and in the far south.!69 It
may also have been intended to cut rural unemployment. We have
evidence of widespread indebtedness in Italy (especially in 63); in
addition to Caesar’s general provisions about debt there were some
applying specifically outside Rome, where for example a lower limit was
fixed on the year’s rent remitted (rents were higher in Rome).!7° And
there seems to have been a measure about debt and the ownership of
property in Italy, perhaps laying down that senators must invest a
proportion of their wealth in Italian land.!7!

It was natural that many of Caesar’s new senators (he put the number
up to 900) should have come from various parts of Italy; men who had
served him, especially in the army, would often have done so. There is no
proof that he put many centurions into the Senate, but one is attested,172
and a number of his officers of equestrian rank were clearly promoted. It
has been suggested that members of families on the rebel side in the
Social War or noted for resistance to Sulla were also brought in. Asinius
Pollio, perhaps the son of a Marsian, as Poppaedius Silo was of a
Samnite, leader, and Ventidius from Picenum, who had figured in
Pompeius Strabo’s triumph in 89, may have owed their seats to Caesar.
And Cicero shows that Curtius, the new senator from Etruscan Volater-
rae already referred to, had an impeccably anti-Sullan background. But it
cannot be proved that Caesar was consciously trying to reconcile and
unite Italy by these actions; while we know that some parts of the
peninsula, notably the area of the Paeligni, had to wait for Augustus to
get their first senator.

We have seen that the veteran settlements may have aroused discon-
tent in some parts of Italy; so no doubt did the exactions on towns made

167 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 519; Frederiksen 1965 (B 153) 183. It was previously thought to be a Roman
lex satura (a law combining unrelated provisions) passed by Caesar or perhaps Antony soon after
Caesar’s death. The fifth clause, about someone authorized to give land to a municipinm fundanum,
whatever that may be (possibly the sunicipium of Fundi) is particularly puzzling, but suggests recent
activity. 168 Dio XLIII.50.3.

169 Suet. Iu/. 42.1. Perhaps never enforced; Varro’s Rust. 11.10, set in 67 B.c. but written after
Caesar’s death, assumes shepherds will all be slaves. 179 Suet. In/. 38.2. '7! Tac. Ann. v1.16.

172 Fuficius Fango, Dio xtviir.22.3, Cic. Aft. x1v.10.2, and possibly Decidius Saxa from Spain,
see n. 121.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 453

to finance the African campaign, and the new permanent taxes.!73
Towards the end of Caesar’s life opposition may also have developed on
political grounds. The upper classes in the towns may, as Cicero
complained, have been most concerned for their own interests, and they
may have cared little for the factional squabbles at Rome. But they would
not approve of monarchy, especially those in ancient cities which had
themselves gone through a development that replaced kings by oligar-
chies. The Etruscan aristocracy, for example, was quite as proud as the
Roman one, and it is worth observing that in his last years Caesar had
trouble with Aaruspices, who probably often represented the outlook of
this aristocracy. The, or a, summus haruspex tried to delay Caesar’s
departure to Africa in 47, and the famous Spurinna, who bears a noble
Etruscan name, prophesied disaster at the time of Caesar’s most arrogant
actions in early 44.!74 In addition, the sort of Greek education at least as
common in much of Italy as in Rome encouraged abhorrence of
‘tyranny’ and admiration for tyrannicide.

3. Rome

Caesar had great plans for the city of Rome. (In view of these, stories
circulating before his death that he wanted to move the capital to
Alexandria or Ilium are incredible.)!75 Rome had changed since, in the
earlier second century, visiting Macedonians had laughed at its appear-
ance. But it was probably still unimpressive to a Greek eye; marble for
instance was not yet much used. Caesar had made preparations as early as
54 for improvements financed from Gallic booty — the Saepta Iulia, a
great marble enclosure for voting purposes on the Campus Martius, and
the Forum Iulium, to the north of the old Forum, which like the Basilica
lulia facing the original Forum was to provide more space for the law-
courts.!76 These buildings were not finished in Caesar’s lifetime,!”” but in
46, on the day after his last triumph, he was able to dedicate the Forum
Iulium and the all-marble temple of the ancestress of his family, Venus
Genetrix, which dominated it;!78 a statue of himself on horseback stood

173 Dio xxit.go0.2.

14 Rawson 1978 (c 246).

"5 Suet. Iv/. 79.3 (Alexandria Troas is hardly the Alexandria meant).

'% Cic. Att. 1v.16.3. For the Forum, Coarelli 1985 (8 277).

‘77 The Saeptum by Lepidus and Agrippa, Dio i111.23, App. BCiv. 11.102, the Forum and Basilica
by Augustus, or perhaps rather Octavian, Aug. RG 20.3.

18 Marble, Ovid Ars Am. 1.81; App. BCiv. 11.281 says the temple was vowed at Pharsalus, but
Weinstock 1971 (H 134) 81 doubts if at this stage Caesar wanted to commemorate victory in civil war
and thinks it planned earlier. Some have supposed the Forum with its temple influenced by the
sanctuaries of divinized Hellenistic Kings, or even the Kaisareia of Alexandria and Antioch, which
is chronologically implausible, Sjaqvist 1954 (B 317).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

454 11. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

in front of the building,!9 which contained valuable works of art,!8° so
that like many temples it also functioned as a museum. Caesar was also
authorized by the Senate to erect a new senate-house, the Curia Iulia, to
replace the old one rebuilt by Faustus Sulla (after the funeral of Clodius)
but recently again burnt down.!8! The new senate-house was to be at
right angles to Caesar’s new Forum, while on the site of the old one a
temple to Felicitas was planned to rise. Temples to Concordia and to
Clementia Caesaris, were also voted. The first two, like the last,
commemorated qualities associated with Caesar. As was usual, the
builder’s name would be prominent on all his buildings; in fact in 46 the
Senate decreed that Caesar’s name should replace that of Catulus on the
Capitoline temple. '82 Thus Caesar imposed his presence on the very heart
of Rome, and in every public act of his life the Roman citizen was to be
reminded of him.

There was also a project for a substantial enlargement of the city,
which as Cicero was told involved diverting the Tiber in order to add
part of what is now Trastevere to the Campus Martius; the latter would
be built over, and the newly added land take over its functions as an open
space. A Greek architect recently arrived in Rome was in charge of
the work.'83 Suetonius reports that Caesar proposed to build the biggest
temple in the world to Mars on the Campus Martius, and a great theatre
at the foot of the Capitol to rival Pompey’s.!®* There was a plan to found
a public library, such as most Greek cities had; the great scholar Varro
accepted the task of collecting as many books in Greek and Latin as
possible.!85 As we saw, doctors and teachers of all the liberal arts were
encouraged to come to Rome, to make it an educational centre.!86 By his
will Caesar left his house and gardens across the Tiber, with all their
works of art, to be a public park; such benefactions were on the Greek
model.!87 It may be that, even if he was less impressed by the ramshackle

179 The statue of Caesar’s horse with cleft hooves placed here, according to Suet. Iu/. 61, may not
be the equestrian statue which according to Statius Si/y. 1.1.84ff was by Lysippus, originally
representing Alexander. The statua loricata (in a cuirass) Caesar allowed to be placed in the Forum,
Pliny HN xxxtv.18, may be different again; within the temple were statues of Caesar and Cleopatra,
Dio t1.22.3, App. BCiv. 11.102.

‘8 Two paintings by Timomachus of Byzantium, of Medea and Ajax, Pliny HN vit.126,
XXxv1.26 and 136, bought by Caesar for eighty talents; six collections of gems, ‘bid. xxxvi1.11 (anda
corselet adorned with British pearls, 1x.116). 181 Dio XLIv.5, XLV.19, XLVII.19.

18 Dio xLiti.14, and see xXxXVII.44 — not carried out.

183 Cic. Aff, xiit.3 3a (notan Athenian, Shackleton Bailey ad /oc., but an enfranchised Greek, some
see gentilis tuus as referring to the proposing tribune not the architect, MRR 11. 307); 20.1, 35.1. Alaw
de urbe augenda seems to have been mooted; it is not clear if it was passed. Having extended the
empire, Caesar had the right to extend the pomoerium.

'% Suet. Iu/. 44.1, and see Dio xi111.49.2. ‘Below the Tarpeian rock’ and thus on the edge of the
Forum, ruthlessly destroying ancient landmarks.

185 Suet. Iu/. 44.2. 18 Suet. Iwi. 42.1.

187 Suet. Iu/. 83.2. Strab. v.235 thinks it is Roman to concern oneself with roads, sewers and
aqueducts.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 455

Ptolemaic monarchy than some scholars have believed, he was dazzled
by Alexandria, still the greatest city of the Mediterranean world, and
determined to make Rome its equal — to his own greater glory as well as
that of his people.188

Two remarks of Caesar suggest the cultural competitiveness with the
Greeks common in his time: his regret that Terence lacked the vis,
energy, to make him equal to his model Menander, and his splendid
compliment to Cicero, that he had extended the boundaries of the
Roman genius.'8° Caesar’s dictatorship is probably remarkable for an
attempt to harness both Greek and Roman intellectuals to the service of
the state. Cicero told friends hoping for pardon that Caesar was
favouring talent.!% The dictator was associated with several lawyers,
notably Ofilius and Trebatius, but to some extent also the doyen of the
profession, Ser. Sulpicius; his plan for the simplification and codification
of the laws will have depended on their aid.!°! He appears to have used an
Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes, in his reform of the Roman calen-
dar; Sosigenes wrote several treatises in connexion with this task, and a
Greek work On the Stars was put out under Caesar’s own name; this wasa
calendar on the model of a so-called parapegma, tying the rising and
setting of stars and constellations to the new civil calendar, with the
weather to be expected at each event, and was meant as a practical
handbook.!% There is evidence, admittedly in a late and bad source, that
Caesar also charged four Alexandrian ‘philosophers’ with an empire-
wide survey.!93 Caesar is not however recorded as a patron either of
poets or of philosophers proper; his brilliant intelligence, which so many
of the sources recognize, seems to have been drawn to practical
applications; even the grammatical work he wrote in the fifties was
meant to regulate and clarify the means of expression.'™ In this he was
perhaps ultimately more Roman than Greek; but his respect for Greek
skills and willingness to favour and even enfranchise Greeks suggest that
one should not see him solely in Roman terms.

Rome was not only to be a cultural and intellectual centre, but a
prosperous and well-run city (though whether the regulations stuck up
at Heraclea reflect new provisions about the aedile’s duty to keep the
streets clean is, as we saw, uncertain). The settlement of so many
members of the urban populace abroad, with the great public works

188 (Caes.] BA/ex. 3 admires the skill of the Alexandrian populace.

189 According to Pliny HN vit.117.

199 Cic. Fam. 1v.8.2. favet ingeniis (as well as birth and position); and see 6.5 and 6.

11 Suet. Tul. 44.2.

192 Ibid. 40.1-2; Pliny HN xvitt.211, cf. 11.39. Plut. Caes. 59.2 speaks of a learned committee,
Macrob. Sat. 1.14. 2-3 a scribe, M. Flavius. A sample passage of the de astris, HN xvitt.237.

193 Julius Honoratus, Cosmographia Iulii Caesaris, GLM 21. This is contradictory about dating,
and the work may have begun in the sos.

14 Frags. in GRF.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

456 It. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

under way or envisaged, may have been meant partly to reduce
unemployment, and so doubtless facilitated the cut made in 46 in the
numbers receiving free grain, from 320,000 to 150,000; there was an
attempt to eliminate connected abuses such as the practice of freeing
slaves, retaining their services, but letting the state feed them.!% A list of
those eligible was made with the aid of landlords of insu/ae, and praetors
were to fill by lot places falling vacant, to prevent, says Suetonius,
assemblies being convened for this purpose, presumably with the risk of
disorder.'9° Caesar was also concerned with the actual supply of corn,
setting up in 44 two aediles Ceriales to be responsible for it, a sound
move;'9’ and the plans for improved harbour facilities at Ostia, and fora
canal from the Tiber to Tarracina,!°8 would have eased the import of
corn as well as other goods. Caesar also — and this might be seen as
markedly anti-popu/aris — abolished all the co//egia apart from certain
ancient ones (Jewish synagogues were also exempted); this was possibly
done by a Lex Iulia, which may have laid down the rules allowing the
Senate to license ‘useful’ new associations which obtained under the
empire.!°° This measure was designed to prevent disturbances; there was
probably also a law de v2, against public violence, with the severe penalty
of exile, aquae et ignis interdictio.2 If the inadequate police force of Rome
was not increased, this was perhaps because troops were now often used
in the city to restore order.

Displays of extravagance by the rich were discouraged; these often
had a political character, and Caesar may have wished to prevent
competition with his own acts of largesse. But sumptuary laws, always
ineffective, had a long history at Rome, where social divisions were seen
as having moral causes, and the oligarchy was suspicious of individual
prominence. Caesar seems to have tried enforcement by means of guards
stationed in the market to stop illegal foods being offered for sale, while
soldiers or lictors might enter a house and practically snatch the dishes

195 This abuse is noted in the 50s, Dio xxx1x.24, and still continued in Augustus’ time, Dion. Hal.
Iv.24.5. Dio xi111.20.4, Caesar threw off the fraudulent.

1% Suet. Inf. 41.3. This recensus has sometimes been mistaken fora full census; Nicolet, 1980 (A 82)
195ff suggests that the geographical arrangement (vicatim) and use of owners of apartment blocks
was a new method of organization, replacing the collegia used by Clodius for this purpose. A clause of
the Tab. Here. deals with an unidentified class of people who must register with the authorities but
do not get corn; as we saw this may not be a Caesarian provision. (Sall.] Ep. 1.7.2, 8.6 thinks the plebs
corrupted by /argitiones and free corn, which should go instead to veterans and colonists in the
towns.

197 Dio XLut.5 1.3.

18 Plut. Caes. 58.10, Suet. Claxd. 20.1. Meiggs 1973 (G 156) 53. The coast between Puteoli, where
ships from Africa and Sicily would put in, and Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, was inhospitable.
Suetonius might imply Caesar himself gave up the plan as too difficult.

19 Suet. Iu/. 42.3; Joseph. AJ xtv.215-16. The privileges of the Jews (including exemption from
military service, which rules about the Sabbath made difficult) were also proclaimed in the

provinces.
20 Cic. Phil. 1.23.8; Lintott 1968 (A 62) 107.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 457

from the table.2°! Though Cicero claims at one point that vegetables,
which were not penalized, have become fashionable, the law was rapidly
ignored.202 Women were also forbidden to use litters in Rome, or to wear
purple or pearls except on certain days and under certain circumstances;
one source suggests the restrictions were primarily aimed against the
unmarried and childless, and both the recent losses suffered by the upper
class in the civil war and its perpetual tendency not to reproduce itself
may be borne in mind. (Dio mentions rewards for large families, perhaps
of the poorer classes, but we know no more about this.)?03 There were
inevitably new taxes, though the principle that Roman citizens were
exempt from direct taxation was not breached. Custom dues at Italian
ports may have acted as a tax on luxuries; an impost on columns
presumably restrained ostentatious building, and extravagant funerary
monuments were penalized.204 The stepping-up of punishments for
various crimes was, says Suetonius, aimed chiefly at the wealthy, who
had often been able to retire to a comfortable exile, realizing their
property to take with them. Parricides now lost all their property on
conviction, and other criminals half.2°5 Equity and the treasury bene-
fited. Details of a treason law are disputed, but the penalty involved
interdictio aquae et ignis.206

There was nothing revolutionary about most of these measures; when
Cicero in 46 spoke in the Senate in gratitude for the recall of M.
Marcellus and in an upsurge of hope for the future it was to ask Caesar to
restore the res publica by reconstituting the courts, encouraging the birth-
rate and repressing vice.2°” He also said credit must be re-established. But
he did not approve of Caesar’s measures concerning debt, having such a
fixation on the sanctity of private property that he even thought direct
taxation immoral.208

When Caesar reached Rome in 49 he found a special crisis, not solved
by the reduced interest rates announced by the tribunes. In the
expectation of war and his possible abolition of debt creditors were
calling loans in and debtors refusing to pay. Both sides were hoarding
coin; land prices had collapsed. Caesar ordered that real and perhaps
other property should be valued by assessors at pre-war prices and
accepted by the creditors since prices would recover; he revived an old
law against hoarding over 60,000 sesterces, so debts could be paid and
money lent again. It was against these moderate measures that Caelius
agitated for the total cancellation of debts and a year’s suspension of rent.

201 Suet. Iu/. 43.2. Gell. N.A 11.24 does not mention a law or laws of Caesar’s own; he was perhaps
enforcing existing measures such as the Lex Antia (p. 331).

22 Cic. Fam. v.26; Aft. xu.7.1 (June 45). 23 Dio XLitl.25.2.
204 Suet. Iu/, 43.1; Cie. Att. x11.35, 36.1. 205 Suet. Iu/. 42.3.
6 Cic. Alt. x11.35- 207 Cic. Marcell. 23. 208 Cic. Of. 11.78fF.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

458 11. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

Probably after Caelius’ death some concessions to the poor were made;
interest accruing since the start of the war was cancelled, likewise a year’s
rent (up to 2,000 sesterces in Rome). This was still not enough for some.
But all Caesar finally did was probably to limit interest rates, and perhaps
allow voluntary bankruptcy for the first time, on tolerable terms, so as to
encourage payment of debts. These measures did not wholly solve the
problem of debt endemic inall classes, and satisfied neither side, but to us
they seem remarkably statesmanlike.2

However, there is no evidence that either the debt laws, or limitations
on the rights of the publicani, wholly alienated the rich; Caesar had
wealthy supporters throughout, like C. Oppius, probably from a
banking family, and C. Matius, who told Cicero he had lost by Caesar’s
legislation, but who was not shaken in his devotion.?!° Nor was there any
real attack on the privileges of the equites in the lawcourts; indeed by new
legislation the courts were divided between senators and equites only,
though it is likely that instead of dispossessing the so-called ¢ribuni
aerarii, who seem to have had the equestrian census, the term equites was
redefined, in this context at least, to include them. That will have pleased
this rather wider class; but it is to be noted that the Senate, though now
larger in numbers and broader in composition than before, disposed of
half the places. Again, hardly the act of a popularis.21!

But, at bottom, no reform could seem tolerable to the Roman upper
class if it was enacted autocratically. When someone mentioned that the
constellation Lyra would rise the following day Cicero retorted ‘Yes—by
edict.’ Sallust, writing a few years later out of bitter experience, said that
to rule by force, even if it means you can and do reform abuses, is
oppressive.2!2 We must come at last to the political and constitutional
issue.

4. Caesar the dictator

At the start of the war, as we saw, Caesar stressed constitutional
propriety, and tried to act on some sort of precedent. Irregularities
gradually crept in. Far the fullest account of the privileges and honours
that Caesar accepted is Dio’s, but it is often thought unreliable, and that
it confuses those paid to Caesar and Augustus. But there is no reason not
to trust Dio in essentials; not only is the tradition in the other late sources
closely related, but where Cicero, or the contemporary coins, can be used
as a check, they generally confirm his accuracy, though suggesting a few
understandable confusions. Most of the facts could have been verified (if
anyone had wanted to do so) from the decrees of the Senate. Dio’s
interpretation is more debatable; he, and other sources, hold that the

2 Frederiksen 1966 (G 78). 210 Cic. Fan. x1.28.2. 21 Suet. Tul. g1.2. 212 Salll. Tug. 3.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 459

senators voted honours without Caesar’s impulsion, from flattery, or
sometimes to create hostility to him: Caesar could not refuse them all. It
is often doubted whether Caesar was so little in control of events; but
Dio assures us that he has omitted many honours that Caesar refused, so
not everything done in the Senate can have been directly inspired by
him.2!3

The real rot set in after Pharsalus, when Caesar was nominated
dictator for a year (six months was the traditional limit, though Sulla had
not kept to it) and Antony came home as magister equitum to take over
from the consul; his anomalous position was symbolized by the fact that
in Rome he wore the civilian toga — with a sword. Dio says that the
Senate also granted Caesar full power to deal with the Pompeians as he
wished, and to make peace and war without reference to Senate or
people; to take five consulships in succession, hold various privileges of
the tribunes and appoint praetorian governors to provinces directly,
while the elections, except those for plebeian magistracies, were post-
poned till his return.2!4 As he was in touch by letter from the East until
besieged in Alexandria, it is likely that most of this programme met with
his approval.215

On returning from Asia in 47 he held the postponed elections, and
those for 46, and began to increase the number of magistracies, and to
replenish the Senate. Dio sees this as reward for adherents, especially
since he had borrowed money from them (and made them pay the full
price for confiscated property); but there may have been practical
reasons as well, though in fact 900 was too large a Senate to be effective,
as Augustus found. (An extra post may have been added to each of the
great priestly colleges because Caesar himself now belonged to all of
them.)2!6

In 46 Caesar was at first consul only, as his second dictatorship had
expired in the autumn. After his African victory the Senate voted him
annual dictatorships for ten years, the unheard-of position of curator
morum for three, the right to sit between the consuls in the Senate, preside
at all games, and nominate the only candidates for some magistracies;
also forty days’ sapplicatio, seventy-two lictors (to mark his three
dictatorships) and white horses for his triumphs (supposedly last used by
Camillus in the fourth century). A statue of him standing on the globe,
with the inscription ‘to the unconquered god’ was erected, but he
subsequently had this erased.2!7

213, Dio xL11.19.3—4; See XLIV.3.3, 7.2 for interpretation.

24 Dio xiv. and see 27.2, 20.3.

25 Cic. Att. x1.6.7, 7.2 mentions letters from Alexandria to Antony; Pdi/. 11.62, that Caesar did
not authorize Antony’s appointment, is implausible invective. 216 Dio XLil.5t.

217 Dio x111.14; Cic. Fan. xv.5 and other sources refer to Caesar as curator morum, and there is no
reason to see this as ironic and to deny Dio’s notice.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

460 II. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

Dio says that Caesar saw that there was fear and suspicion of him, and
so tried to be conciliatory; and that though most of his reforms were put
through the Senate, he became unpopular for restoring, even to that
body, exiles who had been justly condemned, and for establishing
Cleopatra in his suburban property across the Tiber (she had perhaps
come in theory to negotiate a treaty with Rome, which she got).?!8 None
the less, the latter part of 46, extended by the two extra long intercalary
months that righted the calendar, was to Cicero a period not without
hope. Caesar was amicable, though keeping a careful eye on the political
jokes the orator made.?!9 And Cicero explained to friends still abroad
that, though Caesar was slower to pardon those who had fought in
Africa as well as for Pompey, he was becoming more lenient every day,
and the lack of a res publica was not so much his fault as that of his
followers; they had to be rewarded, which could not be done legally.22
(Perhaps also many would fall victim to courts or censors if these
recovered their independence.) Certainly there was no res publica: ‘decrees
of the Senate’ were concocted at Balbus’ house, says Cicero, and his own
name put down as witness without his knowledge.”?! But Cicero was
active in furthering the return of prominent Pompeians, so that there
might be suitable men to run it if the res publica ever was restored; and,
covering himself by a request from Brutus, he wrote a eulogy of Cato
which, as he told Atticus, could not avoid being a political statement.222
He attended the Senate on occasion, but did not speak until Caesar gave
in to senatorial opinion and pardoned M. Marcellus, the hardline consul
of 51; then he made a grateful and complimentary oration, praising
Caesar’s clementia and sapientia and suggesting that everyone was now so
loyal to him that he could safely restore the res publica, and thus gain the
highest form of glory.?23

The revival of the war in Spain cut these hopes short. ‘I prefer our old
and clement master to a new and cruel one’, wrote C. Cassius, not yet a
conspirator; Cicero agreed in distrusting young Cn. Pompeius, but
feared Caesar would this time be harsh in victory.224 The death of his
beloved daughter drove Cicero from Rome for a while and distracted
him from politics. But we know that the city was again under a magister
equitum, Lepidus, and an unparalleled board of prefects directly
appointed by the dictator, since elections had not been held for 45. Much
power rested with the equites Oppius and Balbus, simply as Caesar’s
confidential agents,?25 and with members of his household. We learn

218 Dio xxii. 27.3. Other foreign royalties arrived in Rome to get what they could, e.g. (so Cicero

Ait. x11.2A.2) Ariarathes, brother of the King of Cappadocia. 219 Cic. Fam. 1x.15.
22 Cic. Fam. vi.10, v1.14, VU.28, f. 1V.4, XI.18. 21 Cic. Fam. 1x.15.
22 Cic. Att. xtt.g.2. 223 Cic. Marcell, esp. 21ff.

24 Cic, Fam. xv.19; Fam. vi.1, 2, 4, 6—the victory of either side will be disastrous.
2% Usually paired inseparably in Cicero’s letters.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 461

from Cicero that Caesar’s reaction to his Cato had been an Anticato,
which while scrupulously polite to himself vilified his hero.?6 In May
Cicero attempted a letter of advice to Caesar, modelled on Aristotle’s to
Alexander; there was a good deal of flattery in it, he said, but even so
Balbus and Oppius would not pass it, and Cicero felt he simply could not
rewrite it to their desires.227 True, Caesar wrote that he would not go to
Parthia ‘without settling the state’, but he was thinking of his legislation;
on another occasion he wrote that he would stay in Rome to see that this
was not neglected as the sumptuary law had been.?28 Brutus was still
hopeful when he met Caesar on his way home, and wrote to Cicero that
Caesar had joined the boni; but Cicero commented sourly on his
credulity.22°

When news of Munda was received in April 45, new honours poured
from the Senate: fifty days of thanksgiving, the right to triumphal garb at
all games (and a laurel wreath, which pleased Caesar as it hid his bald
head); the permanent title of imperator; a state-owned palace, the title
Liberator, a temple of Liberty; the consulship for ten years (apparently
turned down);220 a statue on the Capitol with those of the Kings and L.
Brutus; Caesar alone was to command armies and control public finance
(perhaps it was on the strength of this grant that he put his own slaves in
charge of the mint and taxes).23! Cicero’s letters bear out that his statue
was carried with those of the gods in the procession opening all games in
the circus, and that another statue was placed in the temple of Quirinus,
an honour approaching, but not equivalent to, full divinization.232 After
his return, in the autumn, Caesar resigned the consulship, itself an
irregular act, in favour of two adherents; he seems to have been in a
touchy mood, and was much irritated when a tribune, Pontius Aquila,
failed to rise at his Spanish triumph.233

In December Caesar visited Campania, with a large entourage and a
guard of 2,000 soldiers. He dined with Cicero, and ‘the visit, or billeting’
went off well, though conversation was confined to literature.234 But in
January 44 Cicero wrote to a friend in Greece that he now felt shame at

2% Suet. Iu/. 56.5, Cic. Ast. xit.go.1, x111.46.2. Top. 94 calls Caesar’s work impudent (it seems to
have accused Cato of drunkenness and meanness). Caesar also got Hirtius to write on the same
subject, see e.g. Ast. x11.41.4. But some of his followers admired Cato: [Caes.] BA/r. 23.1, 88.5.

227 Cic. Aft. x11.40, $15 XIIL.27.1, 31.3.

28 Cic. Att, x111.31.3 ‘nisi constitutis rebus’; ibid. 7.

229 Cie. Att. x11t.40.1. 2 App. BCiv. 11.107.

31 Dio xLu1.43—$, indicating this time that some he is mentioning were refused. He also believed
Caesar was given the praenomen Imperator as Octavian later was; but it never appears on coins or
inscriptions — he was probably simply allowed to keep it as a title after his prospective triumph,
Syme 1958 (c 274) 1 76ff. Slaves in finance, Suet. Iu/. 76.3; [I Iviri monetales continued to be appointed.
Caesar had in fact coined, perhaps with some sort of authorization, throughout the war. Dio ina
rather confused passage xLu11.48 sees the praefecti of 45 as forerunners of the imperial praefecti aerario.

232 Cic. Ass. xut.44; the people did not applaud the procession. x11.48.1, 12.45.
233 Suet. Iw/. 78.2. 24 Cic. Ass. xut.52.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

462 II. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

living in Rome, and described, as a particular scandal, how on the last
day of the year when the death of one of the consuls had been announced,
Caesar had illegally turned one sort of assembly into another, and had a
friend elected to the supreme post for an afternoon (doubtless so that he
could hold the rank of consular). ‘The consul’s vigilance was extra-
ordinary; in his whole term of office he never closed an eye. You laugh at
such things, for you are not on the spot; if you were here to see them, you
would weep.’235

For some reason we have no more letters till after the Ides of March;
perhaps Cicero felt it impossible to write frankly — or his editors tactfully
suppressed his outspokenness. The chronology of Caesar’s final honours
is uncertain; Dio warns us that he is bunching them, and puts them all in
the new year, but some may date to the end of 45.236 Only C. Cassius anda
few others voted against any of them. They included the right to
triumphal garb and a curule chair for all occasions; the title parens patriae,
to be put on the coinage; the statue carried in procession was to be kept
on a pulvinar or couch like those of the gods; other statues were to be
placed on the rostra, in all the temples of Rome, and towns of Italy; also,
says Appian, in the provinces and allied kingdoms;?37 Caesar’s house was
to have a pediment like that on a temple. All this he accepted. Next, says
Dio, he was made sole censor for life, given tribunician sacrosanctity,
and his son, real or adopted, was promised the high priesthood. ‘Since he
liked this too’, he was given a gold chair and the dress of ancient kings,
and a bodyguard of senators and eguites.238 ‘Since he was pleased at this as
well’, there was more of the same, and finally he was to be worshipped as
a god, a temple was to be built to him and his Clemency (possibly just to
Clementia Caesaris) and Antony was appointed his priest or flamen.2°

The Senate ordered the decrees to be inscribed in gold on silver
tablets. At some point the senators went with the consuls in procession
to announce their decisions to Caesar. They found him sitting in his new
Forum with the architects, and he did not rise. There was outrage, and
Caesar seems to have put it about that he had suddenly felt unwell, which
was not believed (he had walked home).?49 Perhaps it was also in an
attempt to disarm criticism that, somewhere about this time, he issued a
general amnesty, restored the statues of Pompey and Sulla on the
rostra,?4#! and dismissed his Spanish bodyguard, refusing that of senators

35 Cic. Fam. vit.30. Dio xi111.46, fourteen praetors and forty quaestors, nominally elected but in
fact appointed, the swollen numbers being to reward adherents.

2% Dio xiv.6.4. 237 App. BCiv. 11.106. 238 Dio xLv.6.1.

2 Dio xuiv.6.5—6, App. BCiv. 11.106. Dio says he was to be worshipped as Jupiter Julius, but has
probably made an understandable mistake in translating ‘Divus Iulius’ from Latin into Greek.

2 Dio xtiv.8.

21 The statues had been removed after Pharsalus, Dio xLi1.18, XLII. 49. Cicero applauded their
return and this may be when he proposed honours for Caesar himself, Plut. Cic. 40.4., Suet. Iu/. 75.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 463

—and equites which had been voted him.?*? But he exacted an oath of loyalty
to himself from all the senators, as though he had been a Hellenistic
monarch,”43 and tied up the magistracies for the three years he intended
to be in the East. From the beginning of 44 his head appeared on the
coinage — the first time that of a living man had done so in Rome;?4 and
by February 15 he had taken the title of dictator for life.245 This was the
final slamming of the door on Republican hopes.

Here with a vengeance was regnum, as the Romans called any
overweening power; but Cicero had been describing Caesar as rex for
some time.246 The ancients were divided, as modern scholars are, as to
whether Caesar wanted to take the actual title of king or whether it was
his foes who asserted it to discredit him. His attitude to the word may
have been ambiguous. To philosophers the king was the ideally good
ruler, and many Romans in the second century had been much impressed
by Hellenistic kings. But in a strictly Roman context the name was
anathema. It is possible that Caesar felt that the most glorious thing to do
would be to have it offered but to turn it down ~ as Scipio Africanus was
said to have done in Spain.?47 Caesar certainly accepted various honours
evoking kingship, though it should be remembered that all great
Romans regarded themselves as the equals of kings, in a sense really as
kings; the power of the consuls was regia potestas, inherited from the
kings — still more so was that of the dictator, who had the twenty-four
lictors split between the consuls at the inception of the Republic; while
the dress of a triumphator was thought to be that of Etruscan and Roman
kings. Thus Caesar may have regarded his triumphal garb, and in
particular the gold wreath which the coins of 44 seem to show him
wearing, as regal rather than simply triumphal.?48 It is pretty clear that he
also rode into Rome early in 44 after celebrating the Latin Festival in
what he believed to be the dress (especially the high red boots) of the
ancient kings of Alba, from whom he claimed to be descended.?*? It was
on this occasion that part of the crowd hailed him as king, to which he

242 Dio XLIv.7.4.

* Suet. Iv/. 84.2. Cic. Div. 11.23 says a majority of senators in 44 were of Caesar’s creation,
perhaps rightly. 24 Crawford 1974 (B 144) I No. 480.

245 Joseph. AJ xtv.211.2. Cic. Phil. 1187, dict. perp. at the Lupercalia. Alfdldi 1953 (Cc 153); 1962/3
(c 156) tried to prove from the coins that he only took the title in early March, but they cannot be so
closely dated. Gasperini 1968, 1971 (B 158), (B 159) argued from an incomplete inscription that the
dictatorship was rei publicae constituendae causa like Sulla’s, but Sordi 1969 (c 264) shows that the
inscription refers to Octavian, who was IIIvir r.p.c. Caesar’s dictatorships, after the first, may have
been rei gerundae causa. 6 Cic. Att. x111.37. 247 Rawson 1973 (C 245).

248 Kraft 1952 (c 215); cf. Dio xz1v.6.1—-3, 11.2, with Dion. Hal. v.35 and Diod. xxxv1.13. The
attempt of Alfdldi 195 3 (c 153) to find a diadem on one of the coins, however, is refuted by Carson
1957 (C 183) and Kraay 1954 (B 181). Cic Div. 1.119, 11.37 shows Caesar in his purple toga and gold
chair.

«9 Weinstock 1971 (H 134) 324. Dio xxitt.43.2 suggests he wore these boots on various
occasions.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

464 TI. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

answered that he was not Rex — the word was also a Roman cognomen —
but Caesar.250 Now or earlier two tribunes, Caesetius and Marullus, had
the white ribbon-like diadem that was the Hellenistic mark of kingship
torn from a wreath on the statue of Caesar where it had been placed by
unknown hands; Caesar was furious, and had them deposed (which
angered the plebs) — but according to Suetonius he said it was because
they had deprived him of the gloriam recusandi, the glory of refusing the
title.25!

Finally, at the ceremony of the Lupercalia, in the Roman Forum, on 15
February, Antony repeatedly tried to crown Caesar — sitting in his
golden chair, with his purple toga and gold wreath — with a diadem
bound with laurel; he refused it, ordering it to be taken to Jupiter
Capitolinus, the only king in Rome, and that it be recorded in the
calendar that the consul, at the command of the people, had offered him
the diadem, which he had refused. This last act is confirmed by Cicero,
who was probably present.252 This was surely meant to be final, though
some scholars persist in believing that Caesar would have accepted if the
crowd had been more enthusiastic. Apparently some people at the time
did believe this: there was a rumour subsequently that a proposal would
be made in the Senate on the Ides of March, in accordance with a
Sibylline oracle, that Caesar should bear the title of king outside Italy,
since only by a king could the Parthians be vanquished. Cicero is clear
that the rumour was false;?53 and it is fairly obvious that in the next year,
in which he had frequent occasion to write of Caesar, he did not think, or
expect his readers to think, that Caesar had been aiming for the title of
king .254

Godhead is another matter. Cicero’s testimony again makes it plain
that within Caesar’s own lifetime Antony had been chosen, though not
yet inaugurated, flamen to Divus lulius, the God Julius;?55 and it would
be odd (and unflattering in its reminder of the honorand’s mortality) to
select a priest who was to take office only on Caesar’s posthumous
divinization, as has been suggested; besides, the priest might die first.25°
In Rome, flamen was the title of the priests of Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus and
some minor deities; though Quirinus was supposed to be the deified
Romulus, these were all real gods. Other honours similar to those paid to
gods are less crucial.257 Cicero disapproves of Caesar’s divinization, of

250 Dio xxiv.g.2.

251 Suet. Iu/. 79; Nic. Dam. frag. 130.70 (FGrH no. 90), App. BCiv. 11.107. Of course, if he did
make these disclaimers, they could have been insincere.

282 Dio xiv.11.2, and the other late sources; Cic. PAi/. 11.85—7.

253 Cic. Div, 11.110. 254 Cic. Off. 111.83 in particular.

255 Cic. Pail. 11.43.1. 256 Gesche 1968 (H 47).

257 Weinstock 1971 (H 134) attributes wide plans foreshadowing those of Augustus to Caesar; but
see North 1975 (H 92).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 465

course, and Augustus was careful to avoid making the upper class
worship him in Rome in his life, but Cicero seems to mind regnam more.
Naturally Caesar had been worshipped in the East; at Ephesus, soon
after Pharsalus, the cities of Asia joined in calling him ‘the god manifest
descended from Ares and Aphrodite, saviour of all human life’,258
though it is unlikely that the sixth-century chronicle of Malalas is right in
thinking that the Caesareums at Alexandria and Antioch were instituted
by Caesar himself in 47,259 and an attempt to prove that Caesar intended
that the Greek equivalent of famines should be set up in all the provinces
has not succeeded.26° But no one in Rome would worry too much about
what the provinces did in this line. Personally Caesar may have been a
sceptic in religion, though always aware of its political importance and
ready, especially with the cult of Venus, to use it for self-aggrandize-
ment; he may, however, have had faith in Fortuna, and even believed
that there was something superhuman in himself.?6!

And so to the murder — that of a dictator perpetuo, yes, but one also set
apart by numerous extravagant honours and about whom rumours
circulated that he wished to be king. The conspirators numbered about
sixty, under the lead of C. Cassius and his brother-in-law M. Brutus, both
marked out for the position as praetors in office and by family traditions
of Libertas, while the latter, Cato’s nephew, had looked like the coming
leader of the boni.262 Among the rest were pardoned ex-Pompeians, like
the two leaders, and thorough Caesarians, such as D. Brutus and
Trebonius, who had actually been consul the previous year; it is by no
means necessary that all even in the second class should have been
without Republican principle and solely motivated by private grudges.
They decided to kill Caesar in full Senate, as Romulus was said to have
been killed when he became a tyrant. Though Caesar would take no
precautions he knew he was hated, as he told his friend Matius a few days
before the Ides, when he saw Cicero waiting in his antechamber — not
what a Roman consular, his senior to boot, should do: ‘Cicero is
easy-going, if anyone is, but I have no doubt he loathes me.’263 The
remark suggests that Caesar did not understand that constitutional

258 $1G3 760; a number of other Greek inscriptions call Caesar a god in his lifetime: 1G xit.2.165,
356, 5.557, MDAI (A) 1888 61; Raubitschek 1954 (B 223).

259 Malalas 217.5, 216.17.

260 Weinstock 1971 (H 134) 401ff, with North 1975 (H 92).

261 Suet. Iu/. 59.1 says no religious scruple turned him from or even delayed him in an
undertaking (see p. 435 above and in general for the baruspices Rawson 1978 (c 246)); cf. Dio xiii
49.3- The speech Sallust gives him in Cav. 51 is sceptical as to the after-life. The Commentaries, most
unlike Sulla’s, make little play with portents etc.

262 Brutus claimed descent from two early avengers of tyranny, L. Brutus and Servilius Ahala; he
was proud of his family history, Nep. A/7. 8.3, Crawford 1974 (B 144) no. 455. For the Cassii see esp.
Cic. Phil. 1.26, 1 Verr. 30; Crawford 1974 (B 144) no. 452, head of Libertas on coins of Q. Cassius.

263 Cic. Alf. XIV.1.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

466 11. CAESAR: CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP

principle was still strong in many breasts; for Cicero never really
complains of his personal treatment.

To leave Rome on a campaign against Parthia has been seen as an
attempt to avoid the issue. Matius was to write a few weeks after the Ides,
‘if Caesar with all his genius could not find a way out, who will do so
now?’264 He was aware that his death would be the signal for renewed
civil strife.265 He can hardly have imagined that his position, which was
directly based on his personal achievements, could be handed over to an
heir. Certainly there seemed no heir to hand in 44. The infant Caesarion,
at best foreign and illegitimate, was not even mentioned in the will,
written on 13 September 45; Caesar apparently hoped that his wife
Calpurnia might still havea child, and provision was made for guardians
for it. The chief heir (presumably only if no child was expected) was his
sister’s eighteen-year-old grandson C. Octavius, who was required to
take the testator’s name.?® It is interesting that he had not been adopted
in Caesar’s lifetime, though he had been marked out for special favour
and probably designated magister equitum, to enter office when Lepidus
went to his province.267 Caesar must have seen his precocious ability and
ambition, for he preferred him over other and older relatives; and a
successful Parthian campaign could have been used to promote him toa
great position. But Caesar cannot have guessed what he was in fact to
achieve. In the end, like Alexander, he left the future to chance.

It may be that Cicero was partly right, and that Caesar with his deep
loyalty to his followers felt he could not abandon them to a restored
Republic; it is almost certain that he came to feel that he was essential to
his own reforms. There is no doubt that he had a total contempt for the
shaky structure of the old res publica (it may be significant that his
formative years included the seventies, when his two prosecutions of
patently guilty men got nowhere, and the Senate misbehaved badly.)?68
But fundamentally the ancients understood him better than many
moderns. ‘What drove Gaius Caesar on to his own and the state’s doom?
Glory, ambition, and the refusal to set bounds to his own pre-eminence.’
So wrote Seneca;?6? and in his own day Cicero, in the pro Marcello,
showed that he knew that an appeal to Caesar’s desire for glory was the
only possible way to move him. We find it hard to believe that great men
could be dominated by a desire for fame to the exclusion of almost every
other consideration. The philosophers indeed attacked the idea; but
Caesar had little time for philosophers. Though the evidence is mostly

264 Cic, Aft. XIV.1.1. 265 Suet. Iu/. 86.2. 266 Suet. In/. 83.

267 Dio xiiit.51.7, confirmed by Fasti Cap. under the year 44. Schmitthenner 1952 (C 255) is too
sceptical about this; and the condicio nominis ferendi (not precise adoption) is well attested. (Antony
claimed he had been ‘adopted’ in an earlier will according to Cic. PAi/. 1.71.)

268 ‘The res publica is an image nota reality’ sounds authentic, though reported by Ampius Balbus,
Suet. Iu/. 76.3. Early prosecutions, Plut. Caes. 4. 269 Sen. Ep. 94.65.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DICTATORSHIP 467

not contemporary, it is probable that like so many supremely ambitious
Romans he was obsessed with the memory of Alexander.2” Cicero
himself, at least in his earlier years, had been dazzled by the thought of
immortal fame; and to a true Roman aristocrat (such as he was not) the
claims of personal dignitas might well override those of strict legality:
Scipio Africanus, to whom Caesar may have looked,?7! was supposed to
have flatly refused to stand trial for peculation after his great victories —
and got away with it. Yet by tradition the claims of the state were
primary. Virtue, the poet Lucilius had said at the end of the second
century, consists in placing the interests of our fatherland first, and our
own last.272 Caesar, unlike most conquerors, even among those who
have changed the world, was a great man; he probably stood above many
of the prejudices of the time, he tried to stand above party, class or race;
he certainly stood far above all his associates, none of whom seem to
have influenced him, generous as he was to their requests. But Cicero,
who was not always fair to him, was right to say, at the beginning of the
civil war, that he did not put ‘the safety and honour of his country’ above
his own advantage.273

27 Weippert 1972 (c 281) 105ff.

7 See n. 247. Oppius wrote a biography of Scipio, perhaps as Caesarian propaganda (HRR).
72 Lucilius 1327-8 Marx.

273 Cic. Att. x.4.4 (and the same is true of Pompey).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 12

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

ELIZABETH RAWSON

When Caesar had fallen at the foot of Pompey’s statue Brutus lifted his
dagger and called aloud on Cicero’s name, congratulating him on the
recovery of liberty.! The nervous old man had not been in the plot, but
was a very senior consular and the embodiment of Republican principle;
if Brutus hoped, however, for prompt endorsement or even help in
keeping the senators in their places he did not get it. They fled in terror,
and there was panic in the streets outside. The conspirators, guarded bya
body of gladiators previously posted at hand by D. Brutus, made their
way instead to the Forum and harangued whomever they could find
there, stressing that they had only aimed to kill a tyrant, not to seize
anything for themselves.? Meeting with no great enthusiasm, they
occupied the Capitol, either as a symbolic step, or from fear of the
veterans in the city, who were bound themselves to fear for their
allotments. And hither Cicero and other senators did come to congratu-
late them, while young Dolabella appeared in the Forum in the consular
insignia which he had been promised when Caesar should have left
Rome. Antony, the other consul, had fled to his house;3 Lepidus,
Caesar’s magister equitum, who had troops close at hand, may have seemed
the greater threat.

Though we know more about the next year than any other in Roman
history, mainly because Cicero’s correspondence is here so rich, the
precise course of events in the next few days is hard to reconstruct; there
are probably no contemporary letters,4 and Dio and Appian, our fullest
sources, are often contradictory or probably inaccurate. Cicero, how-
ever, said later that the spirit of the ‘liberators’ was as manly as their plans
were childish — he had urged that the Senate should be summoned to the
Capitol, and power seized. Later at least, he thought Antony should

' Cic. Phil. 11.28, 30; Dio xLrv.20.4 says all the conspirators did so in the Forum. See Horsfall 1974
(c 214) for the events of the day.

2 Dio xiv.21.1.

3 Cic. Phil. 1.88.

4 Cic. Fam. v1.15, a brief note of congratulation to Minucius Basilus, one of the conspirators, was,
some think, sent to him on the Capitol; but the subject is as uncertain as the date.

468

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 469

have been killed too.5 Instead, the conspirators sent to treat with Antony
and Lepidus.

To kill a consul, even one irregularly appointed, would bea poor start
to the restored res publica; but an immediate declaration by the Senate that
Caesar had been a tyrant would have strengthened the hands of the
‘liberators’. Brutus, as urban praetor, could have summoned the Senate
in the absence of the consul with sufficient legality; but it may have
seemed impossible to collect enough senators for decency, and we do not
know whether dark was coming on, after which sittings were illegal.
And there was hope that Antony might not prove obdurate, while
Lepidus was a close connexion of M. Brutus.

Troops, land and money were to be the leitmotiv of the next months,
indeed years. During the night, Lepidus’ forces occupied the Forum.
Probably on the next day, Brutus made another speech to the people on
the Capitol,® promising that the veterans would keep their rewards and
allotments. Antony had perhaps already laid his hands on the treasures
and papers in Caesar’s house.’ He consulted with Lepidus and other
friends of the dictator. Lepidus is said to have been for violent measures,
but Hirtius, Caesar’s old officer, who had been designated consul for 43,
spoke for reconciliation, and Antony agreed.® (As Dio points out, force
could have advantaged only Lepidus.) Antony summoned the Senate to
meet the following day, the festival of the Liberalia. The temple was
surrounded by veterans, probably armed, and Lepidus’ troops.

The two estimates of Caesar’s killers that were to dominate ancient
tradition were probably already being formulated. Either they were
sacrilegious parricides, forgetful of private obligations, of the oath of
loyalty all senators had sworn, and of Caesar’s title of ‘Father of the
Fatherland’, his sacrosanctity and his divine honours; or they were
tyrannicides, ‘liberators’, as Cicero loved to call them who had placed
their sacred duty to their country before private ties, demi-gods or even
gods.° Various proposals were made in the Senate — to honour, thank, or
merely spare the conspirators. On the whole, one may note, the Senate,
though packed with Caesar’s creatures, sympathized with them. Antony
pointed out that logically, if Caesar was a tyrant, his body should be
thrown into the Tiber and all his measures, his acéa rescinded; if he was
not, his murderers should be punished. But Antony was for an illogical
compromise; the assassins should not suffer, but the acta, by which as he
pointed out so many of those present held their positions, and the

5 Cicero refused any part in the negotiations with Antony, P4i/. 11.89; advised calling the Senate,
Alt. x1v.10.1, Xv.11; thought Antony should have been killed, xv.11.

6 Probably the contio Capitoline written up for publication, which Cicero thought elegant but
chilly, Ass. xv.1a. Its date is uncertain however; the 15th, or (so Frisch 1946 (c 194)) 17th?

7 Plut. Anat. 15.
8 Nic. Dam. Vita Aug. 106 (rhetorical elaboration?). 9 Rawson 1986 (C 249).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

47° 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

abolition of which would lead to chaos all over the empire, should stand.
Caesar should have a public funeral and his will should be valid.!9 It is
not clear how much influence was exercised by Cicero, who recalled the
famous Athenian amnesty after the fall of the Thirty Tyrants in 403 B.c.,
and on whose proposal the vote was taken. But he later said that he had
only spoken for a compromise because the cause of the tyrannicides was
already lost.!! Antony, however, gained great credit for what was seen as
statesmanlike behaviour. He appeased the veterans’ suspicions in a
contio.'2

When Antony and Lepidus had sent their sons to the Capitol as
hostages, Brutus and Cassius came down to dine with them. A large part
of the populace had hitherto been anxious for reconciliation, but when
Caesar’s will, with its benefactions to the plebs, had been made known,
and during the course of the funeral, marked by a probably inflammatory
speech by Antony, there was a revulsion of feeling.!3 If Cassius, unlike
Brutus, had disapproved of the reading of the will and the public funeral,
he showed the shrewdness which, with greater energy and military
experience, made some contemporaries admire, or fear, him more than
the intellectual and idealistic Brutus.!4 Now, at all events, a tribune,
Helvius Cinna — ‘Cinna the Poet’ — mistaken for the conspirator L.
Cornelius Cinna, was lynched,!5 and the homes of the other leaders of the
plot almost fired. A cult of Caesar was set up in the Forum where the mob
had burned his body, under the influence of one Amatius, or Herophilus,
who claimed to be a grandson of Marius.!6 The consuls did not restore
order or move to eliminate this demagogue until, by the middle of April,
Cassius and Brutus had been forced to flee from Rome, in spite of the
bodyguards they had been granted and their attempts to curry favour
with the veterans.'!? Antony, who had also been allowed a bodyguard,
sped them on their way by getting them exempted from their praetorian
duties. Those of the conspirators who had held office in 45 had gone or
were about to go to their perhaps newly allotted provinces; even D.
Brutus, to the strategically located Cisalpine Gaul to which Caesar may
have designated him. The new Gallic province was given to L. Munatius

10 App. BCiv. 11.128, Dio xxtv.22.

" Cic. Phil. 1.2, Att. xtv.to.1, Vell. Pat. 11.58.4. Appian ignores the speech, Dio gives a lengthy
version.

12 App. BCiv. 11.130, with Botermann 1968 (c 177) off; Plut. Brus. 19.

3 Suet. Iw/. 84.2. says he only had the decrees honouring Caesar read, and added a few words, but
see Cic. Phil. 11.90 as well as the other late authors.

14 Plut. Brut. 20; Vell. Pat. 1.58.2 also says he had wanted to kill Antony. In general, Rawson 1986
(c 249).

'5 Plut. Brut. 20. Wiseman 1974 (C 285) 44 rightly accepts this identification of the tribune,
mentioned in other sources too, with the poet. t

16 Scardigli 1980 (c 254).

17 They allowed them to sell their plots, which Caesar had forbidden.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 471

Plancus. Lepidus, bound to Antony by a rapid and irregular appoint-
ment as pontifex maximus, and a new marriage-alliance, also left for his
command in Narbonese Gaul and Nearer Spain, with the task of
negotiating peace with Sex. Pompeius, whose strength was reviving in
the latter area. Dolabella was also in debt to Antony, who had acquiesced
in Dolabella’s hastily assumed consulship (though he had originally
opposed his election) and arranged for him to have the province of Syria;
Antony himself would take Macedonia, no doubt because six of the
legions for the Parthian War were waiting there. Perhaps as a result of
Antony’s actions, though Dolabella had at first seemed hostile to
Caesar’s memory, he soon gave up this tack. Cleopatra ‘fled’ home to
Egypt.’®

The legions from Gaul and Spain did not appear in Rome, bent on
revenge, as Cicero had feared at one point.!9 But there was one new
arrival. On the news of the Ides the young Octavius returned to Italy at
his mother’s summons from his place with Caesar’s army on the far side
of the Adriatic (it is not likely that the officers at Apollonia suggested he
march the troops to Rome to avenge Caesar”), to be met with the news
of his adoption in Caesar’s will. He was escorted by great crowds,
including troops from Brundisium and the new colonies (or so it was
later claimed) to Campania and then to Rome; rejecting the cautious
advice of his step-father the consular Philippus, he appeared before
Antony’s brother Gaius, the praetor who had taken over Brutus’ duties,
to declare formally that he accepted his inheritance.?!

The policies of the actors in these events are difficult to assess. Antony
has been seen as a genuine moderate, who intended to keep to the
compromise of the Liberalia, but was driven into extreme and violent
courses, either because young Caesar, as he called himself — Octavian is
the name modern scholars use to avoid confusion, though he himself
dropped this additional name that revealed he was only an adopted son —
rapidly threatened to filch the support of those most loyal to Caesar,
including the plebs (perhaps chiefly the really poor) and to a large extent
the veterans;?? or because, though Brutus was sincere in wishing the acta
of Caesar to stand, many Republicans, including Cicero, were outraged
at the sight of Caesarian partisans enjoying the property of Pompeians,
and — very shortsightedly — anxious to go back on the agreement.?3

It is certainly true that tension soon developed between Antony and
Octavian. The latter promptly applied to the former for the moneys
Caesar had left, so that he could pay the legacies to the plebs (300

18 According to Cic. Aft, x1v.8.1. 19 Cic. Aft, xtv.5.1, 6.1.

2 So, Nic. Dam. Vita Caes. 41. But, surely this is later propaganda; aged eighteen and not yet
known to be Caesar’s heir, he was not a plausible leader.

21 App. BCw. 111.14. 22 Syme 1939 (a 118) 107ff. 3 Wistrand 1981 (c 288).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

472 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

sesterces apiece). Antony refused to disgorge, perhaps on the grounds
that investigation was needed into what was Caesar’s and what the
state’s,24 and Octavian set about selling his own property to fulfil his
obligation, with the aid of the two cousins who had been named heirs to
smaller parts of the estate; and probably with the aid also of many of
those personally closest to Caesar, who are now found grouped around
his adopted son — the inseparable Oppius and Balbus, Matius and others,
many of them financiers. (He also succeeded of course as patron to
Caesar’s confidential freedmen, many of them wealthy.)25 He thus gained
immense popularity.26 Antony was also obstructive about the confirma-
tion of the young Caesar’s adoption, and, at some later point in the
summer, frustrated his attempt to capitalize on his popularity by
becoming tribune (quite illegal, as he was too young and, whether as
Octavius or lulius, a patrician); and on at least one occasion the consul
opposed the young man’s placing a golden chair and wreath for Caesar in
the auditorium at the games, in accordance with the honorific senatus
consultum passed the previous year.2” As Dio notes, the plebs had not
forgiven Antony for his harsh repression of them as magister equitum in
47;78 probably they also blamed him for helping suppress the cult of

Tes PTS y they pits -UPP ,
Caesar in the Forum. But Antony perhaps did not take Octavian
seriously for some time — Cicero’s letters hardly mention him. What
Octavian himself was saying is also uncertain; the later sources, perhaps
dependent on his autobiography, declare that he was bent on revenge for
Caesar, and, they imply, succession to a very great, if not unique,
position, and this may well be true. But he had been extremely polite to
Cicero when they met in Campania after his arrival in Italy,29 and was
probably cautious in his public utterances ~ besides, what one said to the
plebs could if necessary be discounted.

As for the Republican threat to Antony’s other flank, it is not clear that
there was any real difference of opinion between Brutus and Cicero at
least. It may be that, though Brutus and Cassius had wisely begun by
promising to the colonists their land, and to Antony and Lepidus all their

24 So he claims in a fictitious speech in App. BCiv. 111.20.

25 App. BCiv. 111.94 sees Octavian desiring ratification of the adoption largely to gain patronal
rights over Caesar’s rich freedmen.

% App. BCiv. u1.21. Alf6ldi 1976 (c 157) 31 stresses Balbus’ role, noting there are stories
suggesting he approved autocracy and desired revenge. Note also that Octavian seems to have
annexed at Brundisium part of the money being sent east for the Parthian War, App. BCiv. 111.39,
Dio xtv.32, Nic. Dam. Vita Caes. 55.

277 Antony obstructs /ex curiata, Dio xLv.3.3; tribunate, Plut. At. 16.2, App. BCiv. 111.120.2,
Suet. Aug. 10.2, Dio xtv.6.2-3 (Cinna’s place) — Rice Holmes 1928 (¢ 252) 1, 26 puts this in the
autumn; chair, perhaps at the delayed /udi Cereales and then the /udi Victoriae Caesaris - App. BCiv.
111.28 mentions two occasions, cf. Plut. Ant. 16, Nic. Dam. Vita Caes. 108, Cic. Aft. xv.3.2 (‘de sella
Caesaris bene tribuni’, 22 May), with Rice Holmes 1928 (c 252) 1, 18.

% Dio xtv.6.2.
% Cic. Aft. xiv.12.2 ‘perhonorifice et peramice’, cf. xv.12.2, seems friendly to the ‘liberators’.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 473

existing honours, they would not ideally have wished to confirm
everything that Caesar had done, let alone what he was said to have been
planning to do. Octavian’s inheritance was soon entangled in lawsuits
initiated by people anxious to recover confiscated property (suits in which
Antony is said to have used his influence against the young heir).3° If
Antony did not trust the ‘liberators’ and their friends, he is not entirely to
be blamed; the moderate Hirtius, who probably served as an intermedi-
ary, did not do so either.

But, salutary as the attempt to get away from Cicero’s and Octavian’s
invective against Antony may be, and attractive as his bold, generous
character might seem, especially to those who had served under him in
war, and to some of the now reduced group of his fellow-nobiles, it is hard
to see him as a devotee of Republican principle. He is said to have
claimed at one stage to be Caesar’s heir, even his adopted son?! (his
mother was a Julia, as he boasted) and it is likely that his moderation was
a temporary expedient, to gain time and strengthen his hand in a bid for
great power, though not necessarily in a form identical with that held by
Caesar — indeed, he pleased the Senate by proposing the abolition of the
office of dictator.32 Cicero, writing from Campania, shows us that even in
April Antony was using his control of Caesar’s papers to propose
various measures, such as full citizenship for all Sicily (and numerous
individuals) and privileges for foreign dynasts. These are said to have
been paid for by huge bribes, and must have gained him support and
gratitude, though, or indeed because, there was doubt whether such
measures had entered Caesar’s head.33 He appears also to have taken
control not only of the valuables in Caesar’s house, but the money,
whatever precisely its purpose, that Caesar had stored in the temple of
Ops.*4 Perhaps in early April, certainly before M. Brutus and Cassius left
Rome, D. Brutus was writing to them of his deep distrust of Antony,
whom he saw as hiding behind protestations about the excited state of
the veterans and plebs, and likely soon to have the ‘liberators’ declared
public enemies. He thought it would come to war, with Sex. Pompeius in
Spain and Caecilius Bassus in Syria the only hope of the ‘liberators’ (no
wonder Antony was anxious that Lepidus should patch things up with
Sextus, though this would also please the Senate).35

In late April Antony set off for a tour of the veteran settlements in
Campania and Samnium, which Cicero in the Second Philippic has

* App. BCw. u1.22.

3 Cic. Phil. 1.71 (in a will earlier than that adopting Octavian).

32 Cic. Phil. 11.91. 33 Cie. Aft, xtv.t2.t.

¥ Alfdldi 1976 (c 157) 77, from confiscated Pompeian property; 700 million sesterces, according
to Cic. Phil. 11.93 and vitt.26.

38 The letter survives as Cic. Fam. x1.1. Some suppose it to date from before the compromise of
the Liberalia (Syme 1939 (A 118) 97), but see Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

474 12, THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

immortalized as a Bacchic rout, but which had administrative purposes
and was also designed to drum up support; he urged the colonists to
stand by Caesar’s acta and drill regularly. His brother Caius, the de facto
praetor urbanus, and the third brother Lucius, who was tribune, might be
expected to see to things in Rome. Veterans — 6,000 says Appian, and
soon organized in military fashion — began to congregate in Rome to
support measures that Antony had in mind and serve as a bodyguard,
more efficient, declares Dio, than the colonists in Rome in the spring had
been (these were now mostly settled). Hirtius, whose distress at
Antony’s behaviour that spring is significant, warned Cicero not to
return to Rome for the senatorial meeting at the beginning of June; it
was said that no friends of the ‘liberators’ would be safe from Caesar’s
soldiers.3¢ Indeed Hirtius and his fellow-consul-designate, Pansa, stayed
away.

Ignoring the probably very thin Senate, Antony put through the
assembly on 2 June — by legislation that was trebly irregular because it
was not a dies comitialis, due notice had not been given, and violence was
used — a bill securing his future by exchanging his province of
Macedonia (which his brother Caius would take over after his praetor-
ship) for Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, which he was to hold for five
years. But he was to have the disposal of the legions now in Macedonia.
There had been rumours of something like this since April.3”7 Dolabella
was won over by getting five years in Syria too. Demands for a
commission to investigate Caesar’s papers were cut short by another bill;
the consuls’ decisions as to the dictator’s intentions were to be final.38
Shortly after (in a thunderstorm, so again illegally) a comprehensive
agrarian law was proposed by the consuls, to benefit both veterans and
plebs; the commissioners were to be headed by L. Antonius (and,
improperly, included Antony himself, though he had proposed the bill).
To Cicero’s rage the plebs at Rome, the military tribunes, and, unkindest
cut of all, the business interests centred at the Ianus Medius and the
equites, all set up statues to Lucius as their patron3? — perhaps a sign that
Antony had support among the better-off citizens, for which there is
indeed some other evidence.

But Antony had not yet repudiated the agreement with the ‘libera-
tors’. Brutus and Cassius were still hanging about near Rome, and he
now persuaded the Senate to give them a function: to organize the corn
supply from Asia and Sicily — something which they however regarded

% Cic. Aft. xIv.21.2, Xv.5.2-3. Keppie 1983 (A 56) 52. On his tour Antony settled the Eighth
Legion at Casilinum.

37 Vetoing tribunes were also bought off, App. BCiv. 111.30. Earlier rumours, Cic. Aft. xIv.14.4.

38 The consuls were to have a consilium, but perhaps chosen by them, Cic. Pdi/. 11.100.

39 Cic. Phil. vi.t2—-15. Nicolet 1985 (c 232).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 475

as a humiliating insult, as Cicero shows in a letter to Atticus which gives
a vivid picture of a family council, including Brutus’ mother, the
formidable Servilia, held at Antium south of Rome on 8 June.* Perhaps
a little later their praetorian provinces were fixed as Crete and Cyrene.*!
It is likely that this was little more than an insult too; it is not probable
that Caesar (or the lot) had envisaged quite such minor jobs for the two
most important praetors of the year, though Appian’s story that the
dictator had proposed to give them Macedonia and Syria is probably an
attempt to justify their subsequent seizure of these areas.*? At this point
Cicero thought they had no plans at all, though they complained of D.
Brutus for ‘missing chances’.

Cicero’s letter also reveals Brutus’ anxiety about the /ydi Apollinares,
now imminent; it was the duty of the urban praetor to preside over these,
but Cicero advised against his returning to Rome. They were to be given
without his presence but in his name, at considerable expense, in the
hope of favourable demonstrations. But C. Antonius advertised them as
for the Nones of ‘July’, not the traditional Quinctilis, to Brutus’ distress,
and they passed off without much in the way of the hoped-for agitation.*3

Games were always of political significance at Rome. At the end of
July Octavian, who had offered to replace the college in charge,
celebrated the /adi Victoriae Caesaris (commemorating the victory of
Pharsalus) on money borrowed from Matius and other friends of
Caesar’s.44 The games coincided with the appearance of a comet. Such
things were usually seen as portents of disaster; but this time the people
believed, or were told, that here was Caesar’s soul translated to the
heavens and divinity. Though Octavian is said to have secretly thought
it portended greatness for himself,45 he seized the opportunity and
placed a statue of Caesar witha star above his head in the temple of Venus
Genetrix.

Octavian was now clearly a real danger to Antony, particularly
because he was also attracting the favour of the veterans — though many
ex-centurions and higher officers of Caesar stood by Antony through-
out. An attempt to retain this favour may explain inconsistencies in
Antony’s attitude to the ‘liberators’, whom he now began to attack
openly. But then there were rumours that he would make concessions to

4 Cic. Att. xv.1t.

“| So Plut. Brat. 19.1, App. BCiv. 111.8, but Nic. Dam. Vita Caes. 112 gives Cassius Illyricum
(perhaps corrupt) and Dio xiix.41.3 Bithynia, cf. Plut. Ant. 54.3, and App. BCw. 111.8 for variants.
“ App. BCw. 111.8, 1v.57, Dio xivii.21.1. Sternkopf 1912 (Cc 266); Frisch 1946 (c 194) 102-3.

3 Cic. Af. xvii, 4.1, 5.1, Pluc. Brus. 21.2-3. App. BCiv. 111.28 says members of the plebs bribed
by Octavian broke up demonstrations paid for by Brutus’ agents and terrorized the audience.

“ Suet. Aug. 10.1 ‘non audentibus facere quibus obtigerat id munus ipse edidit’; see also
Obsequens 128, Pliny HN 11.93, Dio xtv.6.4.

45 Pliny HN 11.94 (from Augustus’ autobiography?).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

476 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

them when the Senate met on 1 August, giving up Cisalpine Gaul and
seeing to it that Cassius and Brutus could return to Rome.* Instead,
edicts issued by these exasperated the veterans, who now or later forceda
temporary reconciliation of Antony and Octavian, a sign of their regard
for both Caesar’s military and his legal heir, and an act of unexampled
enterprise on the part of Roman troops;*? and Antony himself promul-
gated an edict accusing the two ‘liberators’ of preparing for war and
tampering with the troops in Macedonia.‘8 Brutus and Cassius finally
made up their minds to leave Italy — but not for their new provinces;
Brutus was soon to be heard of at Athens, where his statue was placed
beside those of Athens’ own tyrannicides,*? and Cassius, who left later,
was not heard of at all for some time, though there were rumours that he
had gone to Alexandria, or to Syria, where his defence of the area after
Carrhae had made him popular with the troops. It is not clear when they
began to prepare for war; Brutus, at least, perhaps only when hostilities
had already broken out in Italy.5°

Cicero, convinced that nothing could be done against Antony till his
consulate ran out, and his own friends, Hirtius and Pansa, took over, also
determined to leave for Greece, to visit his son, now a student at Athens,
and attend the Olympic games. But in southern Italy he heard that on 1
August an unexpected attack on Antony had been made in the Senate by
Caesar’s father-in-law L. Piso; and finding also that Brutus and others
blamed him for leaving, he turned back to Rome.*!

We do not know what Piso had said; perhaps that Antony’s corrup-
tion and violence were unworthy of Caesar’s memory. Indeed new
legislation, of a popularis flavour, introduced by Antony in August and
concerned with the composition of the juries, on to which many
centurions were put, and allowing appeal from their courts to the people,
went directly contrary to Caesar’s measures.52 Piso was, of course, an old
enemy of Cicero’s (it must have rankled in the latter’s breast to see him
bold enough to undertake the attack he himself had declined); in spite of
the charges in Cicero’s invective In Pisonem of 56 8.c. he seems to have
been a statesmanlike person. Even though no one had dared to follow up
Piso’s criticisms, his action confirmed that there was distrust of Antony
among moderate Caesarians, and it was surely clear that any effective
challenge to Antony in Rome must rest largely on these. (Unfortunately

46 Cic. Phil. 1.8, Aft. Xv1.7.1.

47 App. BCiv. 111.28ff has two reconciliations, perhaps a doublet.

48 Edicts of all three, Cic. Pdi/. 1.8, Att. xvi.7.1, 7, Fam x1.3.1-3.

49 Plut. Brut. 24, Raubitschek 1957 (Cc 240).

530 Nic. Dam. Vita Caes. 135 so of both, but dating departure to October — too late, see Cic. Phil.
x.8. 51 Cic. Ast. xvi.7, cf. Phil. 1.78, Fam. x1.25.3.

82 Cic. Phil. 1.8, 19-20; v.12ff; x11.3.5. Hardly a panel specially for centurions, but one witha lesser
property qualification, and Antony had some centurions — and new citizens who were Greeks, Cic.
Phil. v.13 — put on it?

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 477

Hirtius was ill all autumn.) This is no doubt why Cicero, on the plea that
he was tired from his journey, did not attend the meeting of the Senate on
1 September; for on the agenda were honours for Caesar, which Cicero
could hardly support, while to oppose them would offend old Caesar-
ians.>3 Antony was so angry at Cicero’s absence that he may have seen the
occasion as a trap for him. But next day, in Antony’s own absence, Cicero
delivered the speech on which his First Philippic is based, criticizing the
consul with comparative moderation, but cleverly representing his
actions as not only unconstitutional, but neither popular with the plebs
nor in accord with Caesar’s intentions.

Only one consular, P. Servilius, followed this lead, and Cicero dared
not return to the Senate, now overawed, he complained, by Antony’s
bodyguard of Ityraeans — oriental barbarians. But on 19 September
Antony’s reaction proved to be an onslaught claiming that Cicero had
alienated the Pompeians on one hand and on the other instigated the
murder of Caesar; it was clearly an attempt to isolate him.*4 This suggests
that Cicero seemed a genuine threat; though without close followers, he
had much prestige, and was on friendly terms with most of the important
figures or groups of the time: many of the ‘liberators’ of course, but also
some of the Caesarians, notably Hirtius, and even his ex-son-in-law
Dolabella (who, however, left about this time for Syria).

Cicero retired to his Campanian properties, to work on the great
invective against Antony known as the Second Philippic,>5 and on the
treatises On Duties and On Friendship which, among other preoccu-
pations, stressed the necessity of putting obligation to the state above
personal ties. He was thinking both of the ‘liberators’, who (he held) had
done this, and of Caesarians such as Matius, who had recently written to
express his continuing grief for Caesar, and claim that helping Octavian
with his games had only reflected this personal loyalty;5° perhaps also of
Octavian, whose private duty to avenge Caesar might seem to many
Romans overwhelming. Cicero distrusted the boy, though when
Antony, now openly bidding for the favour of the extreme Caesarians
(he put up a statue to Caesar ‘Parent of his County’ and threatened a
legate of Cassius as going to join a public enemy) accused Octavian,
probably wrongly, of suborning his bodyguard to kill him, Cicero
regretted that this had not occurred.” The ideals of law and the res publica
were being corrupted even in the man who seemed to embody them.

Suddenly events began to move. Four of the Macedonian legions had

533 Cic. Phil. 1.13, 11.10.

54 The speech can be partly reconstructed from PAil. 11, cf. Frisch 1946 (c 194) 130.
55 We do not know when it was published, cf. Cic. A¢t. xv.13.1.

5 Cic. Fam. x1.28.

57 Cic. Fam. xu1.23.2. Octavian may have seen that, as App. BCi#v. 111.39 notes, Antony’s death
would have left the ‘liberators’ too powerful for his convenience.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

478 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

arrived in Brundisium, and Antony went to fetch them, only to find that
Octavian’s agents, and pamphlets, had been before him, stressing that
the consul had neglected his duty to avenge Caesar; and his own offers of
money appeared paltry in comparison with their promise of 2,000
sesterces apiece. Meanwhile Octavian himself was in Campania, where
by the immediate gift of this sum to each man and the promise of future
largesse and, according to Dio, of avenging Caesar, he raised a body of
3,000 veterans to ‘protect’ him against Antony.*® He wrote urgently to
Cicero, asking for a meeting and advice — should he block Antony’s
road, join the Macedonian legions or go to Rome? Cicero was in a
quandary; he still did not trust Octavian — ‘look at his name; look at his
age’ — but here was a heaven-sent weapon against Antony. He advised
the young man, who bombarded him with letters, to go to Rome, but
was not brave enough to follow him there at once.5?

In Rome Octavian addressed the people in a contio that disturbed
Cicero by its praise of Caesar and the phrase ‘so may I attain my father’s
honours’. But he did not, it seems, threaten the ‘liberators’, and Oppius
assured Cicero that he would even show himself friendly to them.
However, on Antony’s approach with some of the troops — discipline
partly restored by executions and bribes — Octavian was forced to retire,
for his men, who were not all armed, were not prepared to fight; they
wanted a reconciliation. Octavian made them new offers of money and
retired to Etruria, where he had influential friends,®! continuing to
recruit.

Antony brought many of his troops into Rome. Some veterans joined
him, but the heavy news arrived that two of the Macedonian legions, the
Fourth and the Martia, who were marching up the Adriatic coast, had
declared for Octavian®? (who gave them another 2,000 sesterces, with
promises of 20,000 on demobilization, and also captured the army’s
elephants). Antony summoned an illegal night meeting of the Senate on
28 November (shutting out some hostile tribunes); according to Cicero
he gave up his hope of getting it to declare Octavian a hostis, but fixed the
remaining provinces for the next year (to the advantage of his friends)
and deprived Cassius and Brutus of theirs. At Tibur he exacted an oath of
loyalty from all the senators who called on him there as well as his troops,
whom he paid the now unavoidable 2,000 sesterces. Probably not

58 The apologetic Nic. Dam. Vite Caes. 131 has Octavian move in self-defence after Antony has
gone south, cf. App. BCiv. 111.40. Dio xiv.12.2, reverses the order. Cic. Aft. xv1.8.2 mentions 3,000
men, Appian 10,000. Linderski 1984 (c 221) for Octavian’s traditional form of crisis-levy (coniuratio);
he could thus claim legality.

59 Cic. Att. xv1.8, 9, 11.6; 10, he bolts in panic to Arpinum. © Cic. Ast. Xv1.15.3.

61 Friends include members of the great families of the Caecinae (Cic. Att. xvi.8.2) and
Maecenates (Nic. Dam. Vita Caes. 133 — possibly the famous Maecenas’ father).

62 The relative dating of these two events is uncertain: App. BCiv. 111.45, Cic. Pail. xi11.19.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 479

trusting them to fight Octavian, he pressed on to Cisalpine Gaul. But D.
Brutus, who had been raising fresh troops and courting popularity with
his old ones, apparently with success, perhaps since his first arrival in the
province, now barred himself in the town of Mutina and sent to the
capital to say that he would keep his command, though he had doubtless
only been appointed for a year, and that he put himself at the disposal of
the Senate. He had perhaps been encouraged by Cicero, who had arrived
in Rome ong December and consulted with Pansa, and was now writing
to him and other governors to urge them not to hand over to Antony and
his friends; he had also received overtures from Octavian, who had
followed Antony north.

On 20 December the tribunes summoned the Senate, to discuss
protection for the new consuls; perhaps hard on this came D. Brutus’
letter. According to Cicero the house filled up when it was known that he
would speak.®5 He persuaded the patres, inthe speech known as the Third
Philippic, to back D. Brutus by confirming all governors in their
provinces, and to honour and reward Octavian and the two legions
which had joined him. Though he could not get Antony declared a hostis,
‘Ihave laid the basis for a res publica’, he claimed.®

It has been said that such action against the consul was treason. But
Cicero held that the Senate was supreme in the state, and that Antony’s
disregard of it, with his other illegal acts, proved that he was no consul
but a tyrant; while the law giving him Cisalpine Gaul was invalid. In
defence of Octavian’s actions Cicero could have appealed to the principle
he had put forward in the De Republica in the late fifties, that in a crisis ‘no
one is a private citizen’, and even perhaps his conviction, elaborated in
the De Legibus, that laws are only laws when they embody what is right, a
more subjective doctrine than he realized.6? As for himself, there can be
little doubt that during the next months, when he was in partial control
of policy in Rome, he saw himself as the rector rei publicae, the guardian
and protector of the state, whose position — based on that of the great
consulars of the past, who traditionally gave the lead to the Senate — he
had sketched in the De Republica.8 Perhaps, too the role of political
counsellor to a great general, such as Laelius had been to Scipio
Aemilianus, was again in his mind, though Hirtius or Octavian hardly
seemed the equal of Pompey, whose Laelius he had once proposed to
be.69 Where Octavian was concerned, Cicero may have thought rather of
the brilliant young men, such as P. Crassus and M. Caelius, whose
mentor he had been; he should have recalled that all these had ended by
throwing off his influence.

83 Cic. Fam. x1.6. (September), 5.7. 64 Dio xLv.14.
65 Cic. Fam. xt.6a.2. 6 Cic. Fam. xit.25.2. 6 Cic. Rep. 11.46, 3.33, Leg. 1 passim.
8 Cic. Rep. Bks v-vi. 69 Cic. Fam. v.7.3, cf. Att. 11.19.5, 20.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

480 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

On 1 January Pansa opened a debate in the Senate, which lasted
several days.’7° It ended with Octavian receiving praetorian imperium
(which his men had wanted to seize for him)’! to oppose Antony, and
being adlected to the Senate, with the right to speak among the consulars
and to stand for the consulship ten years early (which still left him over
ten years to wait). The consuls were to start recruiting, and Hirtius was
allotted the job of going to the army; he would, of course, outrank
Octavian. The Senate undertook to pay the Fourth and Martian legions
the 20,000 sesterces promised them, with demobilization after the
campaign, and land to be found in Italy; any troops leaving Antony for
the consul’s army were to get the same terms. Such offers by the Senate
were unexampled.

Pansa had called first on Fufius Calenus, his father-in-law, to speak,
and perhaps other consulars, before Cicero; the last-named failed to get
the senatus consultum ultimum (see ch. 3, pp. 84-5) passed and Antony
declared a hostis, since Piso objected that this was condemning a citizen
without trial, while Antony’s family staged pathetic demonstrations. Nor
was all Antony’s legislation declared invalid. Cicero gave a rash pledge
of Octavian’s loyalty to the state; but where honours for the youth were
concerned he found himself outbidden, perhaps surprisingly, by the
cautious lawyer Ser. Sulpicius Rufus, and also by P. Servilius, who had
betrothed, or was soon to betroth, his daughter to the young Caesar.72
However, on the proposal of Fufius Calenus, who was perhaps not the
mere agent of Antony Cicero calls him, the Senate decided to send an
embassy to Antony consisting of Piso, Philippus and Ser. Sulpicius, who
was in frail health, to urge him to withdraw from Cisalpine Gaul and to
submit to the Senate;73 if he refused, it would be war. Cicero, addressing
the people, made all he could of this ultimatum, and could rejoice that,
perhaps as part of a bargain, the agrarian law of June was abolished.”

Cicero chafed at the delay the embassy caused in preparations for war,
to which he urged the Senate in the Seventh Philippic. He rightly thought
that Antony might be ready to give up Cisalpine Gaul, if he could keep
the Transalpine province, but remembering the power that Caesar had
amassed there, felt this would still be intolerable. In fact the embassy,
returning early in February without Sulpicius, who had succumbed en
route, reported that Antony would be content with his full five years in
the Transalpina, with six legions, if by their end Cassius and Brutus had
also left the provinces they would hold after their consulships, which he

70 Frisch 1946 (c 194) 168ff, Cic. Pdil. v.

71 App. BCiv. 111.48.

72 Cic. ad Brut. 1.12 (and Philippus proposed a statue); Suet. Axg. 62, the engagement.
Cie. Phil. v.3, 4, 25, 31- ™ Cic. Phil. vt.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 481

thus perhaps accepted.75 He also claimed rewards for his men equal to
those given to Octavian’s, and validity for his acta. The Senate, after an
agitated debate, rejected these demands.”¢ It refused to use the word war,
but declared a state of emergency and probably passed the senatus
consultum ultimum;, Antony’s uncle, L. Caesar, supported by Pansa
(Hirtius had now left Rome) prevented him being made a ostis. On the
declaration of a ¢umultus all citizens had to put on military dress;
consulars were exempted, but Cicero wore the sagum as an example.
Antony’s men were told to lay down their arms by the Ides of March.
Not long after, all Antony’s acta were annulled, though Pansa saw to it
that those believed to be Caesar’s were revalidated;”’ and, significantly,
the law barring Pompeians from office was revoked. Massilia recovered
the lands Caesar had taken from it — and settled veterans on.

Meanwhile rumours about Cassius’ achievements in Syria had been
reaching Rome; and soon there came an official letter to the Senate from
M. Brutus, who had peacefully taken over Macedonia from his relative
Hortensius the retiring proconsul (Brutus had perhaps only moved after
hearing of the events of late November in Italy and Antony’s removal of
his own province). He now controlled most of Macedonia and Greece,
and also the greater part of the troops in Illyricum, and was soon to
capture C. Antonius, his brother’s intended governor of Macedonia. He
wrote that he was at the Senate’s disposal. Pansa, against the opposition
of his father-in-law, who argued that the Caesarian veterans would
dislike it, but urged on by Cicero, successfully proposed that Brutus be
made proconsul of Macedonia and Illyricum, and asked to stay near
Italy. The appointment of C. Antonius had, after all, been revoked by the
Senate,’8 and Brutus wrote very properly. Cicero was not to find it so
easy to legitimate Cassius.

At the end of February news came that Dolabella, on the way to his
province of Syria, had seized and killed the tyrannicide Trebonius, now
governor of Asia; according to Cicero’s version, after savage torture.
Everyone expressed outrage; Fufius Calenus probably had pleasure in
proposing that Cicero’s ex-son-in-law be declared a hostis, though Cicero
himself was classing Dolabella with Antony as a monster.”? It was now
known indirectly that Cassius had succeeded in taking control in Syria,

% Cic. Phil. vitt.27, cf. x111.37. Frisch 1946 (c 194) 197 on the apparent contradiction with vitt.25:
possibly he was ready to give up Transalpine Gaul if Cassius and Brutus were not consuls. App.
BCiv. 111.63 says he wanted to punish D. Brutus.

% Frisch 1946 (c 194) 199-200. Péil. x proposes honours to Ser. Sulpicius assimilating him to an
ambassador killed in war.

7 Cie. Phil. x.17, cf. xit.10, 31; 32.

7% On 20 Dec., when the Senate told all governors to keep their provinces, p. 479 above.

Cic. Phil. x1.1; App. BCiy. rt.26 with different bias and details.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

482 12, THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

over both the legions opposing and that supporting the Pompeian
adventurer Caecilius Bassus, and that the four legions from Egypt had
joined him. Cicero proposed that he be given an extraordinary command
in the East, on the excuse of suppressing Dolabella; but Calenus moved
that the consuls should do this when the trouble at Mutina was ended
(this might encourage them to make peace with Antony) and Pansa, who
perhaps would have liked an eastern command, supported him.® In fact
Cassius’ friends and relations, it emerged, did not support Cicero’s
proposal; the latter’s influence was perhaps temporarily weakened.

The campaigning season was approaching, and with it the prospect of
fighting in the north, for D. Brutus in Mutina would starve if not
relieved. A last attempt at compromise was made by Piso and Calenus,
taking up, or putting about, rumours that Antony was ready for
concessions. With Pansa’s support they got a vote for a new embassy of
five consulars (themselves with Cicero, Servilius and L. Caesar), but
Cicero soon backed out on the grounds that there was no real evidence
Antony had changed his mind, that Hirtius and Octavian were being
ignored, morale would be damaged and anyway his own life would not
be safe outside Rome.8! The proposal lapsed.

But others were anxious for an accommodation too; on 20 March
letters from Lepidus in Narbonese Gaul and Plancus in northern Gaul
(the former at least probably inspired by Antony) arrived urging peace
and the preservation of citizen lives. But Cicero was implacably opposed
to any agreement that left Antony with an army, and in the Thirteenth
Philippic he also contemptuously dissected a letter of Antony to Hirtius

-and Octavian, which urged the reconciliation of all Caesarians in the face
of a Pompeian revival, and deplored the use of veterans for purposes
other than revenge on Caesar’s assassins. Cicero argued that such
divisions were dead and done with (but his praise of Sex. Pompeius was
hardly tactful); no, all parties were now united against a few criminals
who had put themselves outside civilized society.82 Thus throughout
this period he describes Antony as a gladiator, as a /afro, brigand, or even
as a wild beast; his followers are held up to similar obloquy — could the
state he handed over to such men? Cicero also wrote to rebuke Plancus,
politely, and Lepidus, more sharply — which was perhaps unwise,
though at the start of January Cicero had tried to bind the unreliable
Lepidus by proposing a gilded equestrian statue of him in the Forum in
gratitude for his coming to terms with Sex. Pompeius.8? Antony had

% Cic. Phil. x1 esp. 16-36; Fam. x11.14.4, the consuls to appoint delegates till they could come
themselves. See also Fam x11.6-7; 12~1 3; ad Brut. 11.2.3; 11.4.2.

81 Cic. Phil. x11.1-7, 18; Dio xLvr.32.3.

% Cic, Phi/. x11 (Antony’s letter in §22—48).

8 Cic. Fam.. x.6, 27. Statue, Phil. v.40, ad Brut. 1.15.9 (showing it was pulled down in the
summer).

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 483

claimed to be in touch with both Plancus and Lepidus, and Cicero knew
that of the latter at least this was true. But Plancus wrote to the Senate to
apologize for his démarche, and blamed his troops, to whom great
promises were being made from Antony.

At last Hirtius and Octavian felt able to move against Antony, who
fell back towards Mutina. Pansa left his duties in Rome to the loyal but
insignificant urban praetor Cornutus, with one legion to protect the city,
and pressed north with four of new recruits. On 14 April Antony
intercepted them at Forum Gallorum. The inexperienced troops were
put to flight and the consul wounded; but Hirtius had detached a strong
force to meet the newcomers, which retrieved the situation. Octavian
meanwhile had defended his and Hirtius’ camp resolutely and all three
generals were hailed imperator.85 Seven days later there was a battle near
Mutina, from which D. Brutus perhaps made a sortie. Antony was
defeated, and decided to retreat with his cavalry and surviving infantry.
But in the heavy fighting Hirtius had been killed, and almost simulta-
neously Pansa died of his wounds at Bononia.86

The first news that reached Rome was of Pansa’s initial defeat, and
there was panic, with rumours that Cicero was planning a coup. When
calm was restored, and a double victory announced, there was a reaction.
Antony was finally declared a hostis, as Cicero had so long urged.’ There
were scenes of great enthusiasm for the orator, as he wrote to M. Brutus.
Cicero proposed an ovation for Octavian, which was opposed —
Octavian himself was to ask for a triumph. Cicero also failed to get
Decimus Brutus’ name put in the calendar as a permanent memorial of
his deeds, but his troops were promised rewards equal to those of the ex-
Antonian legions, and when the consuls’ disappearance was known, on
27 April, he was put in command of their forces (two senators even
proposed that Octavian’s troops be transferred to him). The Senate
reduced the bounties to be paid to the Fourth and Martian legions, for it
was in severe straits for money; but the sum was still large, and a little
later the Senate also set up a board to oversee the settlement of the men
concerned; against Cicero’s advice, it left both Decimus and Octavian off
the commission.88 (In the course of time, this arrived in Cisalpine Gaul
and tried to negotiate directly with the troops, bypassing Octavian
altogether; the men would have nothing to do with it.) On 27 April too,
Cassius’ imperium was legalized, on the proposal of P. Servilius; and Sex.

4 Cic. Fam. x.8.3, ‘exercitus magnis saepe promissis sollicitatus’.

8 Vivid account by Hirtius’ officer Sulpicius Galba, Faz. x.30; cf. App. BCiv. 111.67. The 15th,
Bengtson 1974 (Cc 172) from the MSS of the letter, but see Shackleton Bailey ad Joc.

% App. BCiv. 111.71, Dio xLv1.38 are our chief sources; Cic. ad Brut. 1.3.4, Hirtius’ death, Fam.
x1.13.2, D. Brutus reports Pansa’s. Bengtson 1974 (c 172) 506 denies the sortie.

8 Cic. ad Brut. 1.3.4, cf. Fam. x.21.4.

& Cic. Fam. x1.21.2, 5 (the commission was not apparently sent to deal with land).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

484 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

Pompeius, who was now in Massilia, probably building up his powers,
was given a naval command.® These acts might indeed seem to mark the
revival of the Pompeian cause.

Jubilation was premature. The death of the moderate consuls, who
formed some sort of buffer between young Caesar and the ‘liberators’,
precipitated disaster. Octavian was refusing to obey Decimus Brutus —
and indeed it seems his troops would not have let him do so.9° Decimus’
own forces were in a pitiful way, as he tells Cicero in one of a series of
letters of the highest interest; and so Antony got a head start.! Antony’s
legate Ventidius was coming up with three legions raised in the veteran
colonies and in his own home area, Picenum. Octavian, it appears, made
no attempt to stop them;% and Antony, after a hard march to Liguria —
according to Plutarch, he was always at his best in adversity — was able to
join them. His force was now stronger than that of Decimus Brutus (still
in pursuit). And by a feint he soon slipped over the border to Gallia
Narbonensis.®3 Lepidus’ army there was now the best in the West, with
many evocati from Caesar’s colonies in the province.™ He had proclaimed
his loyalty to the res publica in letters, but no one trusted him. He had not
punished officers giving aid and comfort to Antony; he now blamed his
troops for fraternizing with the newcomers (as they doubtless did),
inviting Antony into their camp, and finally ‘in their desire for peace’
going over to him entirely. Antony from the start of the war had been
promising the now usual 2,000 sesterces plus vast benefits on victory.
Lepidus followed his men’s example; his legate Laterensis fell on his
sword.

Plancus still wrote loyally, claiming to have eluded Lepidus’ and
Antony’s advance against him, and D. Brutus was able to join him; but
Pollio, coming up from Spain with troops whom he had for some time
complained of as unreliable (many of them had served Caesar and some
had received Antony’s promises) and who had himself been a friend of
the dictator, though not, he maintained, of autocracy, threw off the
allegiance to the Senate which he had been maintaining under consider-

8 App. BCiv. 111.74, Dio xLv1.40.1, Livy Ep. 120-1; Cie. Fam. x1.19.1.

% Botermann 1968 (c 177) 74ff suggests from PAi/. x1.37 that two of his legions, the Seventh and
Eighth, of Campanian evocati, had been on strike, unwilling to ight Antony. But they took part in
the battles in April.

91 Cic. Fam. x1.13.1 (D. Brutus to Cicero).

2 App. BCiv. 111.66 with dubious story of a previous march on Rome to seize Cicero by
Ventidius. We do not know his route now; perhaps Octavian could not have stopped him, Bengtson
1974 (C 172) 513. But he is said to have made a point of caring for Antony’s wounded.

99 Plut. Ant. 17.2 Shackleton Bailey ap. Cic. Fan. x1.15.4 denies Antony’s threat to Pollentia was
a feint.

% Cic. Fam. x.32. Lepidus’ army, Botermann 1968 (c 177) 197ff, seven legions.

98 Cic. Fam. x.8.3, from Plancus; 10.31, from Pollio in the winter, complaining of lack of orders
from the Senate and that Lepidus intercepts his mail, cf. 10.32 (June).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 485

able difficulties, and reconciled Plancus (whose troops naturally wanted
a share in the rewards going) with Antony. D. Brutus fled, in the
desperate hope of reaching Macedonia by land; but he was betrayed by a
Gallic chieftain hoping for Antony’s favour, and killed.%

Cicero was appalled by these successive blows. He begged M. Brutus
to bring his troops to Italy, but Brutus — as the Senate had indeed bidden
him do when regularizing Cassius’ position — had turned east to Thrace
and Asia.’ The prospect of elections for suffect consuls, and for the
magistracies of 42, paralysed Rome; Octavian was demanding to stand
for the consulship, according to one version finally proposing to do so
with Cicero.% Plutarch says he later confessed to trying to play on the old
man’s ambition, but in the surviving letters Cicero opposes Octavian’s
desire, which he blames on his ‘friends’. Octavian was also well aware
that Cicero and the Senate were simply using him, and indeed that there
was attributed to the former a saying that the young man was to be
praised, rewarded,and raised up — or removed, as the same word
implies. His action, or lack of it, immediately after the relief of Mutina,
however, suggests that he was ready for a deal with Antony before
senatorial hostility to himself or his troops — later his excuse, and perhaps
exaggerated in the apologetic tradition! — became apparent.

The men were persuaded that only his consulship would ensure them
their rewards. A party of them, led by a centurion, arrived in Rome to
demand it.!°! The Senate refused. So, in early August, a Caesar crossed
the Rubicon again, this time with eight willing legions. Attempts to
negotiate (Octavian concealed an offer by the Senate to pay 10,000
sesterces immediately to the Fourth and Martian legions) and to organize
resistance under the praetors failed; for the previously summoned three
legions from Africa — they had served under Caesar, and who now was
there to command them in the Republic’s name? — went over, as did the
legio urbana. The Senate now offered 10,000 sesterces to all Octavian’s
men, and the consulship to him. He was camped outside Rome. At the
last minute Cicero seems to have made a final attempt at opposition,
based on a rumour that the Fourth and Martian legions, whose
Republican principle he had so often proclaimed, had mutinied. Finally
the senators streamed miserably out to greet Octavian; even Cicero
came, though one of the last, as Octavian pointedly observed.!°2 The
praetor Cornutus killed himself.

D. van Berchem 1966 (c 174).
Cic. ad Brut. .15.12, 18.1, 5.4 (May 4).
App. BCiv. 111.82, Dio xtvi.42.2; Plut. Cie. 45.5—6, Cic. ad Brut. 1.10.3.
Cic. Fam. x1.20.1, cf. 21.1 and Vell. Pat. 1.62.6. Cicero does not explicitly deny he said this.
Pace Velleius, Shackleton Bailey doubts if to/lere alone can mean ‘raise up’ as well as ‘get rid of (ap.
Fam. x1.20.1). 100 Suet. Aug. 12. 101 App. BCiv. 111.88.

102 App. BCiv. 111.92, hostile to Cicero and the Senate.

238

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

486 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

Octavian had the final ceremonies legalizing his adoption carried out,
and was formally, if irregularly, elected consul on 19 August (he was still
only nineteen) with Q. Pedius, Caesar’s nephew and heir to a part of his
estate; the implications were clear. Octavian’s adoption was confirmed.
The declarations that Antony and Dolabella were hostes were repealed;
Caesar’s assassins ~ and Sextus Pompeius — were condemned and
outlawed in absentia.!3 All available moneys were seized; the soldiers all
got their 10,000 sesterces on account, and the plebs received Caesar’s
legacies in full. Very soon Octavian was back in Cisalpine Gaul; here,
with stringent security overseen by Lepidus, he met Antony, and to the
joy of both armies was reconciled with him. The troops insisted he marry
Antony’s step-daughter. Years later, at Brundisium, they were still
pressing for full reconciliation between the two men they saw as Caesar’s
heirs.

The confederates now set themselves up as II Iviri for the reorganiza-
tion of the state, ret publicae constituendae, for five years (a law was to be
passed in Rome). Octavian and Antony were to pursue the war against
Caesar’s murderers, with twenty legions each. In 59 B.c. the whole
empire had perhaps fifteen legions in arms; now there were over sixty,!™
and doubtless auxiliary troops to match. Antony was to keep Cisalpine
and Transalpine Gaul, Lepidus Narbonensis and Spain, Octavian, still
the junior partner, was to get Africa, Sardinia and Sicily (where he was
likely to have trouble with Sex. Pompeius). They were in desperate need
of money and land for the troops. And so, after lengthy bargaining as to
who should be ‘pricked down’, they issued an edict declaring, if Appian
has correctly recorded the sense,!5 that Caesar’s clementia had been a
failure, appending a list of men to be killed. According to the historians
300 senators and 2,000 equites perished, though many of the proscribed
escaped, to Macedonia or to Sex. Pompeius in Sicily, in spite of the price
(including freedom for slaves) put on their heads. Their property would
not be enough to satisfy all demands, so eighteen of the richest towns in
Italy, with their territories, were to be given to the soldiers. The
peninsula was to be in turmoil for years as a result of what almost
amounted to an accidental social revolution. Such was the triumvirs’
response to the neutrals’ and crypto-Antonians’ pleas for peace.

While in Rome Octavian had apparently allowed, or forced, Cicero to
retire to his villa at Tusculum in the Alban hills. But Antony made sure
that he, with his brother and nephew — and his son, but he was with M.
Brutus and survived — were on the fatal list. Cicero tried half-heartedly to

103 One juror, P. Silicius Corona, voted to absolve; he survived till the proscriptions, App. BCw.
111.9§, 1v.27, Plut. Brut. 27.3, Dio xiv1.49.5.

104 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 449, 473; perhaps 4,000-5,000 in a legion.

105 App. BCiv. 1v.8—-11 (claiming to give a translation of the Latin).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 487

flee by sea to Macedonia, but on 7 December was caught and killed at his
villa at Caieta. He seems in the end to have died bravely.'%

His role in the final struggle, with which his name is indissolubly
linked, has been judged diversely. After November 44 there are no
letters to Atticus, who perhaps destroyed from caution any written (but
both men were in Rome till near the end). The sources of Dio and
Appian are uncertain, and not unbiased.'°” There are however the
fourteen Philippics, and some fascinating letters to artd from M. and D.
Brutus and other important figures. It is clear that Cicero was not in
unchallenged control at Rome, even after Pansa’s departure; he com-
plains bitterly about the other consulars dragging their feet, and though
he says he does not distrust the consuls, as many do, he finds them
lacking in ‘wisdom and energy’.!°8 And, as ever, there were those, both
in Rome and the provinces, who disliked or distrusted him — he himself
speaks of ‘envy’ reviving against him.'® But he praises the spirit of the
Senate as a whole; indeed after the battle of Mutina it seems to have taken
the bit between its teeth and gone further, in an attempt to reassert its
supremacy and cut Octavian at least down to size, than Cicero thought
wise. But it was soon riven by disagreement and distracting intrigues
over the elections. “The Senate was my tool, and it has fallen to pieces.”!!0

His influence had none the less been great; Antony’s letter to Hirtius
and Octavian saw him as the impresario or ‘manager of gladiators’ of the
whole war, and M. Brutus blamed him bitterly for raising up Octavian
till the youth was as much a tyrant as Antony. As Brutus wrote to
Atticus, ‘I know that he has always acted with the best of intentions ...
But he seems to me to have done some things unskilfully, though the
most experienced of men; or from personal ambition, though he did not
hesitate to incur the enmity of Antony in all his power for his country’s
sake.”!!1 Brutus it seems was trying to keep open the option of joining
Antony against Octavian — he treated Antony’s brother Gaius very
correctly, a clemency that Cicero deplored;!!? and indeed we are told that
Antony wrote to Octavian in the summer threatening to join the
‘liberators’ if his overtures were rejected. It will be recalled that Lepidus
was Brutus’ brother-in-law. But could such an alliance have brought
long-term peace and constitutional stability to the Republic?

Cicero told Brutus that there had been no alternative to using

106 Frag. of letter from Cic. to Oct. ap. Non. 436.22. Death, Plut. Cie. 47-9, perhaps ultimately
from the slave eyewitnesses, using Tiro’s biography and other sources; see Homeyer 1964 (B 45).

107 Appian, Magnino 1984 (8 67) Bk. 3 (introd.): not solely Potlio; Dio, Manuwald 1979 (B 70)
(not Livy). 108 Cic, Fam. x11.4, X.28, x.5; ad Brat. U.1.1.

109 Cic. Phil. vitt.30; x1t.50, Fan. xt.s.3. "0 Cic. Fam. x1.14.1 (to D. Brutus, late May).

"1 Cic. ad Brut. 1.17.1; the authenticity of this letter has been queried, recently by Shackleton
Bailey ad /oc., but not disproved.

"2 Cic. ad Brut. 1.2a.2 ‘if we are to be merciful, civil wars will never cease’; Vell. Pat. 1.65.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

488 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

Octavian.'!3 Had his ill-assorted coalition, however, had any chance of
success? The Philippics may seem unrealistic; they insist that the people
are loyal to the res publica, and so is all Italy, with its freshly raised citizen
soldiers, who will outweigh the veterans. In fact, if the people cheered
‘Cicero, it was perhaps largely as Octavian’s friend; Ventidius and others
could recruit for Antony in Italy; and anyway the new levies were largely
irrelevant, except as an added expense. A vivid passage of Appian shows
the veterans at Forum Gallorum performing terrible and silent execution
on each other, to the amazement of the new recruits!!4 (the Martian
legion was ready to fight Antony, from whom it could expect no mercy;
its men were hardly inspired by Republican ardour, as Cicero claims).
Furthermore, finance was a crushing problem. Cassius and Brutus were
squeezing every drachma from the East — it is likely that they offered
their troops the going rate in rewards!!5 — and one doubts if the revenues
from the West, where all the governors were probably strengthening
their armies, were coming in either. Various festivals at Rome had to be
suspended. The momentous step was taken of reimposing tributum,
direct tax on citizens (abolished in 167 B.c.), but the rich were
recalcitrant.!!6 One may note that in the De Officiis Cicero had declared
direct taxation an absolute last resort, bound to be resisted.!!7 As a result
the vital pay (doubled by Caesar, as we saw) and rewards for the troops
were delayed or cut down; and the soldiers doubtless recalled the
Senate’s bad record, even in more normal times, over agrarian legisla-
tion. Rewards and honours had also to be distributed to the generals, and
these honours, irregular or exaggerated, made a bad basis for the
restoration of Republican government; Brutus reproached Cicero for
the way he scattered them around, though in fact he was not the worst
culprit.118

Cicero was aware of these problems, though perhaps not far enough in
advance. But it could not be foreseen how formidably single-minded the
‘boy’ was to prove. The death of the two consuls at once was very bad
luck; without it Antony might have been trapped, or seen his forces
scattered and unable to join Ventidius. Even after Cicero’s death the
cause of the ‘liberators’ might have triumphed; its defeat at Philippi was
not a foregone conclusion. For Tacitus that was the end of the Republic,
now left defenceless: nulla iam publica arma.'!9 Yet one doubts if the slide

"13 Cic. ad Brut. 1.15, a long letter of self-defence.

14 App. BCiv. 111.68, possibly rhetoric.

"5 Botermann 1968 (c 177) 94 for Brutus, 104ff for Cassius.

N6 Nicolet 1976 (G 174) 874; cf. Cic. Fam. x11.30.4; ad Brut. 1.18.5 (July) refers to a 1 per cent
tributum, Dio xLvI1.31.3 a 4 per cent taxon capital plus 4 obols for every tile on a senator’s house. Cic.
made armourers work without pay and exacted contributions from Antonians, App. BCiv. 111.66.

NT Cic. Off. 11.74. "8 In ad Brut. 1.15.39 he defends himself.

119 Tac. Aan. 1.2.1 (Sextus Pompeius also proved a formidable nut to crack but Tacitus implies
his arma wete privata.)

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES 489

to disaster could have been reversed; the causes of the Republic’s decline
went too deep.

In the short term its collapse can be laid at the door of Caesar and
‘Caesar’s ghost’, which many historians have seen ominously active. It
was a desire to succeed to at any rate some of his power and splendour,
and to base it as he had done on the army, that led the dynasts of 44-43 to
oppose the Senate’s claims to rule. Octavian at least perhaps also really
desired to avenge his death, in a society where family pietas and personal
dolor were proper motives for action, for all Cicero might say about duty
to the state. It was loyalty to Caesar (though also desire to be sure of the
land he had given them) that made many veterans willing to follow only
those who had ties with him, and to press for their reconciliation with
each other and for vengeance on his killers.!29 It was Caesar who had set
the precedent for vast donatives; and it was the great concentrations of
wealth that he had amassed that encouraged Octavian and Antony to
make their ‘poisoned gifts’. Perhaps also admiration for Caesar and his
reforms led some intelligent men to reject the idea of a return to the old
regime, with its outdated role for the urban plebs, and its nervous and
corrupt Senate unable to keep order in the streets, control the generals or
agree on major reforms.

Cicero analysed the res publica more profoundly than any other Roman
thinker of his time. He understood some of the shortcomings of Sulla’s
attempted restoration of it; he saw the misbehaviour of the Senate Sulla
had left in uncontrolled charge, and that the people could not now be
deprived of the tribunate to which they had for so long been strongly
attached.!2! But he was too devoted to Roman — and Greek — tradition to
see all the problems clearly, at least when he wrote his political treatises
in the late fifties. He put his faith in the old ideal of the mixed
constitution, viewing the consuls, the Senate and the People with their
tribunes as balancing and checking each other in a way they did not now
do, if they ever had;!2? rather, their ill-defined powers resulted in
continual friction (did tradition, mos maiorum, prescribe that a consul
should obey the Senate? could the Senate in a crisis override popular
rights?). Cicero would also have liked to see strong censors, always in
office, decide what the law was and who was breaking it, and this might
have helped to control great individuals, and the senators in general.123
Since we have the De Republica and De Legibus in incomplete form, we
should be careful what we say Cicero failed to understand or find a
remedy for. But his comprehension of the social and economic grie-
vances of the poor was certainly deficient, and the liberty to which he was
devoted was a narrow aristocratic concept. He does also seem to have

120 Cic. Phil. x1tr.35 (Antony in his letter to Hirtius and Octavian).
121 Cic, Leg. ut.19ff. 12 Esp. Rep. u.4iff. 123 Cic. Leg. 111.46f.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

490 12. THE AFTERMATH OF THE IDES

been slow to realize the danger from great generals, and was not himself
without blame in the matter of extraordinariae potestates (had he not
supported the Lex Manilia?). But by the end he knew that ‘we are the
playthings, my dear Brutus, of the whims of the troops and the arrogance
of their generals’.!24

124 Cic. ad Brut. 1.10.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 13

THE CONSTITUTION AND
PUBLIC CRIMINAL LAW

DUNCAN CLOUD

I. THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION

In what sense can one talk of ‘the Roman constitution’? Clearly, Rome
had no written constitution of the type introduced into the modern
world by the United States in 1787, but did Rome have a constitution in
the weaker sense one uses in speaking of the British constitution? The
answer must be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Bolingbroke in 1734 (A Dissertation
upon Parties, Letter 10 ad init.) offers a working definition: ‘By Constitu-
tion, We mean, whenever We speak with Propriety and Exactness, that
Assemblage of Laws, Institutions and Customs, derived from certain
fixed Principles of Reason directed to certain fixed Objects of Publick
Good that compose the General System, according to which the
Community hath agreed to be governed.’ Now it is striking how Cicero
in dealing with issues which we would label ‘constitutional’ appeals to an
‘Assemblage’, to use Bolingbroke’s word, with which the latter, and his
readers, would have felt immediately at home. For example, when in
March 43 the orator wishes to argue that M. Lepidus, the future triumvir
currently governing Gallia Narbonensis and Hispania Citerior, cannot
do what he likes with his army, he says: ‘It is lawful for no man to lead an
army against his country, if by lawful we mean (si cere id dicimus) that
which is allowed by the laws (/eg/bus) and by the custom and institutions
of our ancestors (more maiorum institutisque.)' Sometimes Cicero adds the
notion of i#s, roughly equivalent to ‘right’ or ‘justice’; for instance, he
summarizes as follows an attack by L. Aurelius Cotta on the manner in
which Clodius had engineered Cicero’s exile:

L. Cotta said .. . that nothing in my regard had been carried out rightfully (wre),
in accordance with the custom of our ancestors or in accordance with the laws:
no one can be removed from the body politic without a trial or be the object of a
motion or even a judgement involving the loss of civil personality
except before the centuriate assembly — Clodius’ proceedings had been a case of
brute force ...”2

1 Cic. Pbil. xiv.14.

2 Sest. 73. The translation of ‘de civitate tolli’ by ‘cemoved from the body politic’ is supported by
Cicero’s usage in Rose. Av. 3, Clu. 79, Sest. 42 and Prov. Cons. 46. 1 can find no parallel for de civitate
tollere used in the sense of ‘deprive of citizenship’, as the Budé and Loeb translators wish.

491

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

492 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

Another element introduced into what we would regard as consti-
tutional discussions is precedent (exemplum): Cicero condemns Gabi-
nius, governor of Syria, for occupying Alexandria although mos maiorum,
exempla and the severest penalties of the law forbade it.3

Thus far Cicero seems to be discussing constitutional issues in a
thoroughly British manner. But there is one fundamental difference —
Cicero does not use the word ‘constitution’; Latin lacks any unequivocal
equivalent of the word. Res publica, sometimes translated ‘constitution’,
is in fact closer to ‘state’ or ‘commonwealth’, as the phrases e re publica,
contra rem publicam, indicate; for they mean ‘in accordance with/against
the interests of the state’, not ‘constitutionally’, ‘unconstitutionally’. Of
course, there are occasions when it is tempting to translate sare or more
maiorum by ‘constitutionally’, but we should always remember that ias
and mos maiorum are merely parts of an overarching concept, ‘the
constitution’, which we possess, but the Romans lacked. The Greek
words politeia and politeama which can mean ‘form of government’ lend
themselves more easily to translation into ‘constitution’ terminology
and it is no doubt precisely because Polybius used these words in his
celebrated account of the organization of the Roman state (v1. 11-18)
that we find it so natural to talk of the Roman constitution. Nevertheless,
if we are to understand the way the Romans looked at law and government,
we must learn to think like them. This has a couple of consequences.

Firstly, as we have already seen, Cicero when concerned with
‘constitutional’ issues, usually includes ancestral custom and/or institu-
tions in the list of concepts to be appealed to. But if custom rules, then
innovation is ipso facto suspect. Thus respectable constitutional change
can only be conceptualized in terms of the return to some ancestral norm;
when such a norm cannot easily be discerned in the historical record,
precedents from the distant Republican past have to be inserted into a
suitable context, or context as well as precedent invented. It is note-
worthy that the two major ‘constitutional’ innovations of our period, the
Lex Sempronia de capite civis and the senatus consultum ultimum, have
both been provided with fictitious early Republican pedigrees.*

The lack of any unequivocal concept of constitution among the
Romans raises a second problem, namely what to include under that
head. The offences committed by Gabinius and contemplated by
Lepidus, were in fact violations of the Lex Cornelia maiestatis and the
Lex [Iulia repetundarum; a cluster of offences aimed at preventing
magistrates or the Senate from carrying out their duties were dealt with

3 Pis. 50.

‘ For an episode invented to assail the Senate’s custom of setting up special courts dealing with
capital offences, see Livy 1v.s0—-1 (414-413 B.C.); for a more lively story invented partly to support
the custom, see Livy vii1.18 (331 B.C.).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 493

by the /eges de v7. For a Roman such acts constituted infringements of ius
publicum (public law) and by the end of our period were handled by a
number of permanent criminal courts (guaestiones perpetuae). Such
offences we shall discuss in the following section entitled Ius publicum, in
this section we shall deal with certain ‘constitutional’ institutions or
enactments which did not involve recourse to permanent criminal
courts. Nearly all of these relate to the citizen’s caput — a word which in
this context can be roughly paraphrased as ‘life and civil personality’ and
the question at issue is the extent to which a citizen’s life is sacrosanct.

The literal meaning of the word caput is ‘head’. The head as the most
obviously vital part comes to mean ‘life’ and then ‘civil rights’, since a
citizen deprived of these ceases to exist as a citizen. Caput can even mean
‘free status’. This complex of meanings can be attested for the second
century and is perhaps of native growth. Loss of caput arouses emotion,
but emotion of a selective kind. To ascribe to Romans of our period an
across-the-board horror at the idea of killing, even killing Roman
citizens, would be absurd.

However, what did raise the emotional temperature was treating a
citizen as if he were a slave. In virtue of his summary powers of
jurisdiction (coercitio) a magistrate could have a slave flogged or exe-
cuted, but he was forbidden to do either to a citizen without due process
of law, probably even on active service.® This freedom from the arbitrary
exercise of power by a magistrate is known as provocatio ad populum
(appeal to the people). We have been conditioned by Mommsen into
thinking of provocatio as an appeal to a higher court, in this context the
centuriate assembly. This way of looking at provocatio is inappropriately
legalistic; there is no evidence of any citizen ‘appealing’ against a
flogging or a death-sentence from a magistrate to the comitia. The
citizen’s right to provocatio was a challenging reminder to any magistrate
tempted to thrash or execute a citizen in summary fashion that such
conduct was an affront to the nature of Roman citizenship. Regard for
his own existimatio coupled with fear of the sympathetic violence of the
crowd, the ‘people’ to whom the threatened citizen appealed, ready, at
times, to support the citizen’s challenge,’ were factors that would
normally deter the tyrannically inclined magistrate, but ifa governor like

5 For caput=‘life’, Ter. An. 677, probably also Plaut. Asin. 132; for caput = ‘civil personality’,
Plaut. Pseud. 1232; for caput = ‘free status’, Plaut. Merc. 153.

6 Livy x.9.4. In 122 Livius Drusus proposed that the Latins should have provocatio against
flogging even on military service (Plut. C. Gracch. 9): a fortiori, Roman citizens already had provocatio
against capital punishment and flogging on active service. See A. H. M. Jones 1972 (F 89) 23-5 for
other evidence. However, as Roman soldiers were frequently decimated in the first century B.c. (see
Plut. Crass. 10, Suet. Aug. 24.2, Dio x1.35), their right of appeal seems to have had little value by
then and was formally abolished by Augustus under the Lex Iulia de vi (Paulus Sent. v.26. 2).

7 Livy 11.55 provides an imaginative picture of what a tyrannical magistrate might expect from
bystanders sympathetic to his victim.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

494 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

Verres was determined to ignore the crowd and execute a Roman citizen,
as Verres did in the case of P. Gavius of Cosa, then nothing could be
done to stop him or punish him. All the same, the concept must still have
carried emotional weight to justify Cicero’s hyperbolical language.’
However it is unlikely that any provocatio legislation was passed during
the period covered by this volume; the famous Lex Porcia was sponsored
either by the elder Cato in 195 or by P. Porcius Laeca, tribune in 199.°

It is not only individuals who can threaten a citizen’s caput. When C.
Gracchus passed his statute de capite civis which enacted that no capital
sentence could be passed ona citizen without the sanction of the people,
his was not yet another provocatio law, for his target was not the despotic
magistrate, but the special courts set up by the Senate alone without the
sanction of the assembly;!° these had become a controversial institution
as soon as one was set up in 132 to punish and execute the supporters of
his brother.

This Lex Sempronia, by complicating the processes necessary to
establish special courts, may have given a fillip to the growth of the
regular criminal courts that form the main subject of this chapter; for
these, being set up by a statute of the assembly, did not infringe the
Gracchan /ex. However, according to the standard and plausible
interpretation of events, the optimates riposted with an appeal to another
aspect of mos, the tradition that in a state of emergency the
consuls must preserve the safety of the state.!! Indeed, in 133 the Senate
had urged the consul P. Mucius Scaevola to defend the state with arms,
but he declined and Scipio Nasica took the law into his own hands. In
121, in a similar situation, the consul L. Opimius did respond and the
death of C. Gracchus along with many of his followers was the result.

Such an empowering by the Senate of the consuls to protect the state
at a time of national emergency is known nowadays as the senatus
consultum ultimum (hereinafter scx). This was probably never a technical
term in the Republic and suggests a precise procedural and formulaic
structure unsupported by the ancient evidence; there are variations in the
wording of the senatus consultum and in the number and status of the
magistrates invited to act. From 88 onwards named persons are usually
designated as hostes (public enemies), but by a decision of the Senate
distinct from the scx. For example, as the Catilinarian conspiracy

® In De Or. 11.199 he calls provocatio ‘patronam illam civitatis ac vindicem libertatis’.

9 The scanty evidence points to Cato the censor as author of the law; the language of Livy x.9.4.
echoes a fragment of a speech by the elder Cato (Festus p. 266 Lindsay). On the other hand, the
celebrated denarius minted ¢. 110 by P. Porcius Laeca (see Crawford 1974 (B 144) 313-14) enhances
the claims of his namesake, the tribune of 199, as the statute’s author. Perhaps there were two
statutes.

10 See Stockton 1979 (C 137) 117-21 and refs.

11 See Lintott 1968 (a 62) 159-68; Strachan-Davidson 1912 (F 150) 1.240-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 495

developed in the course of 63, the sew was passed in October, but the
decree declaring Catiline and his lieutenant Manlius Aostes was not passed
until the following month. Sometimes a ‘umultus, a state of military
emergency, is declared and sometimes a levy of citizens is imposed. !?
Nevertheless, there is a sufficient family likeness between each use of the
senatorial decree for sew to be a useful shorthand expression. The first
instance of the sew is in 121 and the last in 43.

It does not get us very far to ask whether the scw was ‘constitutional’ or
not. For if we regard provocatio, as statutorily defined by the Lex Porcia,
as a constitutional right, then Opimius undoubtedly infringed it in 121
by putting to death citizens without a trialand when duly prosecuted ina
popular court he ought to have been condemned; instead, he was
acquitted.!4 It is more helpful to think of a conflict between two Roman
traditions, the right of the citizen to a trial when his caput is at stake, and
the right of the community to take every step to protect itself from
destruction. The latter is the more fundamental of the two rights and that
is why the citizen in the field (wmilitiae), despite provocatio, accepted
summary execution from his commander. But as these ‘rights’ are more
in the nature of gut-feelings than constitutional guarantees, then the
same act can be regarded as legitimate one year and criminal a few years
later, when the feelings have changed, as Cicero was to find to his cost.

Two points are worth making about the sex. Firstly, it did not formally
give the consuls, or whoever were enjoined to act, powers that they did
not have before!5 but gave them rather more than moral support in
taking the strongest possible action. It was rather more than moral
support in two ways: it was a recognition by the supreme council of state
that a state of emergency existed and, by acting in its traditional role as
council (consilium) to the supreme magistrates, it put extreme pressure on
those magistrates to act de consilii sententia, in accordance with their
council’s opinion. For as we shall see, it was generally accepted that
persons inviting the advice of a consilium would normally take that
advice.

The second point is that the sev was passed so as to enable the
magistrates to execute citizens with or without a trial. It is extremely rare
for citizens condemned on a capital charge to lose their lives: they lose
their civil personalities by being interdicted — in effect, banished — and

12 In 77, the decree was addressed to the interrex, a proconsul and other holders of imperium (Sall.
H. 1.77.22M). The decree of 52 (Asc. 34C) was similar. One consul only was addressed in 121 (Cic.
Phil. v.34). A tumultus was decreed in 77 (Sall. H.1.69m; 111.48.9M), 63 (Dio xxxvul.31.1), 49 (Dio
x 1.3.3) and 43 (Cic. Phi. vitt.2—3; x1v.2). For the levy in that year see Cic. Phil. vitt.3 2, but there had
been one in 63 (Dio xxxvit.33.3 and 40.2; Cic. Caf. 1v.17). See also refs. inn. 19.

13 See the list in Greenidge 1971 (F 68) 400-6. The fate of Q. Salvidienus Rufus in 4o (Vell. Pat.
1.76.4) may be a further example. 4 Livy Epit. uxs; Cic. Sest. 140.

15 The point is well made by Last CAH 1x! 84-5, cited in Lintott 1968 (a 62) 156-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

496 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

assume the citizenship of some other place,!6 but are not physically
killed, a point noted in the speech put into Caesar’s mouth by Sallust in
the debate on the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators.!? However, it is
much more tolerable to put enemies of the state to death; to declare that a
citizen has become a Hostis publicus is to assimilate him not simply to the
citizen of a foreign state, like an interdicted Roman, but to a member of
an actively hostile country. The proscriptions of Sulla (82-81) and the
triumvirs (43—42) illustrate the point. In those cases legislation or the
powers assigned to the triumvirs!® not merely deprived the proscribed of
civil existence and property but declared them 4ostes publici and it was in
virtue of this new status as public enemies that they were put to death.
No doubt that is why from 88 onwards it was customary for the Senate to
add the naming of specified persons as hostes to the issuing of the sew;
herein may lie a reason for Cicero treating the Senate as his consi/ium in the
most formal way possible at the debate of 5 December 63; for by this time
the naming of Aostes had become so much the norm that not to name
some persons might be regarded as putting them in a less heinous class
than persons named. Moreover, this was the first time that an ex-consul
was among the potential victims of the sca— P. Lentulus Sura had been
consul in 71.19

We turn next to a small number of developments which have as their
common focus the Roman magistracies. Most are connected with Sulla.
In 82 Sulla revived the dictatorship in a somewhat different form from
the type of dictatorship last seen at Rome in 202; the earlier type had a
maximum duration of six months but Sulla’s had no time-limit attached
to it. On the other hand, if we may trust Appian’s intrinsically plausible
account,° it had this in common with the earlier model, that it was fora
purpose, ‘to enact such laws as he might deem fittest and to establish a
constitution, epi ... Ratastasei tés politeias’. Appian’s Greek is clearly an
attempt to translate the traditional Roman title, dictator legibus scribundis et
ret publicae constituendae, and since Sulla did in fact enact a large number of
laws and set the state in order, Appian is probably right about the nature
of Sulla’s dictatorship. Sulla came closer than any other legislator, except
perhaps Augustus, to producing for Romea code of criminal law, but he
was also active in what we would term constitutional matters. He
increased the number of quaestors from eight to twenty, made the
quaestorship obligatory for those who wished to proceed to higher
office and probably fixed the minimum age for the quaestorship at

16 Cic. Caecin. 100; Dom. 78. 7 Sall. Cat. $1.22.

18 In the case of Sulla by the Lex Valeria (Cic. Rose. Am. 125); the triumvirs received their powers
from the Lex Titia of 43.

'9 For the specification of Catiline and Manlius as Aostes, see Sall. Cat. 36.2; for Cicero’s fastening
of fostis-status upon P. Cornelius Lentulus Sura, see Cic. Caf. tv.11 and 22.

20 BCiv. 1.99.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 497

thirty.2! His purpose in increasing the number of quaestors was to ensure
a regular infusion of new blood into the Senate. It is often said that Sulla
abolished the censorship but the only evidence for this is the fact that no
censors were elected between 82 and 70. It is however a little rash to
suppose that Sulla envisaged the total elimination of the censorship. He
had used his dictatorship as a kind of super-censorship; he had ensured
that the Senate would be regularly replenished but he had devised no
mechanisms for expelling those who showed themselves unworthy of
the order or for making periodical enrolments of the population; these
functions were presumably still to be carried out by the censors. Sulla is
also said to have increased the number of praetors from six to eight,2?
supposedly to provide presidents of some status for the permanent
criminal courts (guaestiones perpetuae) which he had created or reconsti-
tuted. He drastically reduced the powers of the tribunes, but though
they regained their powers in 70, a decade of impotence contributed to
one permanent effect: Sulla’s guaestiones perpetuae effectively replaced the
assemblies as criminal courts. Even though tribunes could once again
prosecute on capital charges in the assembly, they seem to have done so
seldom.

The final ‘constitutional’ topic that calls for some comment is
imperium. The late Republic was faced with two potentially contradic-
tory needs: on the one hand, it needed to adapt to the requirements of an
empire institutions which had been framed for the administration of a
city state, for adaptation rather than innovation was almost inevitable,
given the Roman attitude to mos and instituta maiorum. On the other
hand, it was necessary to find ways of preventing over-mighty magis-
trates, promagistrates and private citizens from overthrowing the
Republican system by some form of coup. The first problem was handled
in two ways; one was to bestow on individuals ‘wperium (the administra-
tive power of higher magistrates) for a specific purpose and over a
specific area; for example, M. Antonius in 74 and Pompey in 67 were each
given imperium covering the whole Mediterranean sea-coast and in
Pompey’s case for fifty Roman miles inland in order to deal with the
pirates. Yet their ‘mperium was no greater than that of any individual
provincial governor whose imperium overlapped with theirs, it merely
covered a larger geographical area. Pompey’s sole consulship for part of

21 For the increase in the number of quaestors and its purpose, see Tac. Aan. x1.22; for the
quaestorship as a compulsory first stage in the cursus honorum see App. BCiv. 1. 100. That Sulla fixed
the minimum age for holding the quaestorship at thirty is a plausible inference from Cic. Péil. v.46.
See, however, Seager in ch. 6 above, p. zo1.

2 The evidence for Sulla increasing the number of praetors from six to eight is circumstantial and
ambiguous (see Cloud 1988 (F 37)).

2 Sulla would seem to have deprived the tribunes of their right to convene meetings of the
Senate (though there is no direct statement to this effect in the sources); he restricted their use of

intercessio (Cic. u Verr. 1.155) and abolished their right to initiate legislation (Livy Epit. uxxxrx, in
defence of whom see Keaveney 1982 (C 88) 186-7 n. 3 and Ferrary 1985 (F 52) 440-2).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

498 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

52 gave one man greater imperium than any other magistrate possessed,
but at least the consulship was an annual office and Pompey’s supreme
power could not have been made to last longer than a year without
recourse to other statutory instruments.

Much more contentious was the response of Sulla and Caesar to the
problem, namely the assumption of the dictatorship itself; for the
dictator’s imperium overrode that of all other magistrates and Sulla’s
dictatorship was untraditional in that it was not conferred for a fixed
period; however, inasmuch as it was conferred for specific and
traditional purposes, namely the promulgation of laws and the settling of
the state, there was at least the implication that when Sulla had
completed these tasks he would lay down his dictatorship, as in fact
happened. However, Caesar’s last two dictatorships were even more
untraditional and thus even more unacceptable than Sulla’s by the
standard of mos matorum: the third, conferred after the battle of Thapsus
in 46, had no specific field and was untraditional in that it was to be for
ten years, though probably annually renewable, while the fourth,
conferred in 44, went further and was both general in scope and
bestowed in perpetuity. It was because this last development gave Caesar
the powers of a pre-Republican king and thus, like other measures
treated elsewhere in this volume, affronted the whole Republican
tradition, that tyrannicide, itself a traditional concept, became a persua-
sive option.

The late Republic found it impossible to cope with the other problem,
the over-mighty magistrate, promagistrate and private citizen. Indeed,
the measures described in the previous paragraph tended rather to
exacerbate it. Ironically in view of their careers Sulla and Caesar, as we
shall see, tried toughening up the statutes regulating the conduct of
provincial governors (the /eges maiestatis and repetundarum) and Sulla
reaffirmed the old rules regulating the assumption of magistracies.24 But
it was left for Augustus to devise ways of dealing with the problem that
were to work quite successfully for a century.

Il. IUS PUBLICUM

At this point we encounter a difficulty which is the opposite of the one
we had to face at the beginning of the chapter: whereas the Romans had
no word that exactly corresponds to our ‘constitution’, we have no word
that corresponds to the Roman phrase, zas publicum. Cicero uses the

24 Sulla seems to have confirmed existing regulations defining the minimum ages for holding
curule offices (thirty-six for the aedileship, thirty-nine for the praetorship and forty-two for the
consulship), as well as enforcing a two-year gap between each office and a ten-year period before
anyone could hold the same magistracy a second time (App. BCiv. 1.100).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

IUS PUBLICUM 499

phrase frequently but does not define it.25 From a passage in one of his
rhetorical treatises a number of points are clear:?6 first, public law is
contrasted with private law which is in turn virtually equated with civil
law. Secondly, its field is defined by the interests, functions and
organization of the state. In practice, ‘us publicum includes constitutional,
administrative and criminal law. It can even include sacral law.?’ It is
thus not equivalent to our statute law, since sacral law was seldom the
product of legislation. This presents the British historian with a
problem: not only is ‘public law’ an odd expression in English, since we
have no ‘droit public’ or ‘diritto pubblico’, but there is no word for an
infringement of public law; the Roman jurists, when they eventually felt
the need for such a word, used crimen (which actually means ‘crime’ in
post-Ciceronian Latin) and its cognates.28

The main feature of Roman public law during our period is the
establishment ofa series of permanent courts (quaestiones perpetuae) witha
field mainly concerned with crime, though one court was wholly and
two others partly concerned with constitutional matters. Anyhow,
because the term is applicable to most of their activities, they will be
referred to as ‘criminal courts’ and their field as ‘crime’, as indeed is the
convention in English discussions of the subject. The first of these
permanent courts was established in 149, but, since crime did not
suddenly come into existence in that year, our first task must be to look
briefly at the ways in which the community at Rome dealt with grave
offences subsequently handled by the permanent courts.

In 149 there existed five ways of dealing with crime.

1. Jurisdiction arising from patria potestas

The most primitive and arguably the most tenacious was the domestic
power of the pater familias. From earliest times the male head of the
household possessed absolute power in virtue of his patria potestas not
only over his slaves and freedmen but over all sons and daughters in his
potestas. These powers antedate law and flow from mos maiorum;? it is
therefore, strictly speaking, improper to speak of the father’s domestic
‘court’ or his ‘jurisdiction’. Nevertheless, his procedure when one
member of his extended household (familia) was suspected of commit-

25 Balb. 34, 64; Brut. 222, 267, 269; Dom. 33, 34, 128, 136; Fam. 1v.4.5, 1v.14.2, V1.1.5; Har. Resp.
14; Mil. 70; Off. 1.64; De Or. 1.201, 256; Rep. 1.3; Vat. 18.

2% Cic. De Or. 1.201. ™ See esp. Dom. 136.

78 For the practice of the early jurists, see Schulz 1946 (F 268) 72-4. For crimen= crime cf. Cod.
Theod. 1.12; D.48.1.1.39.

2 Dion. Hal. (Ant. Rom. 11.26) asserts that Romulus assigned powers of life and death (ius vitae
necisque) to the pater familias, while Papinian (Co//atio 1v.8.1) ascribes the conferral of these powers to
a statute of the regal period. Clearly, the Romans thought patria potestas to be an institution virtually
as old as Rome itself. See Lacey 1986 (F 231) and Harris 1986 (F 212).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

joo 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

ting a crime, usually, but by no means invariably, against another
member of the household, customarily took the shape of an informal
trial. He would normally call in his friends to act as a consilium or council
and he would normally abide by their advice. However, it needs
stressing that, although he was expected to do both these things, the
ultimate decision was his; he was not absolutely ob/iged to call in a
consilium or accept their decision, as if it were the final verdict of a jury.

2. The Iviri capitales

Turning next to examples of jurisdiction in the strict sense, we find
another institution coexisting with the permanent criminal courts, the
IIIviri capitales. These minor magistrates, over and above supervising the
prisons and executions, exercised over slaves a jurisdiction which could
be capital.3! It is also certain that they exercised some measure of criminal
jurisdiction over citizens; Cicero reports a case in which a IT Ivir handles
the initial proceedings against a suspected citizen-murderer.32 Since, in
Cicero’s tale, the IIIvir is bribed to drop the proceedings, we have no
means of telling how much further down the procedural line he could
have gone, had he chosen to do so, but another piece of evidence
sug gests that, in certain circumstances, the IIIviri had complete criminal
jurisdiction over citizens. Varro tells us that the [Iviri took over the role
of the parricide quaestors in dealing with crimes (maleficia).3 These
parricide quaestors dealt with capital crimes committed by citizen
against citizen, particularly with murder — hence their name.* It
therefore follows that their replacements, the [I Iviri, had the same sort of
jurisdiction over citizens. However, it is most unlikely that such
relatively minor magistrates could dispense, over citizens of any conse-
quence, the kind of summary justice implied by the réferences in
Plautus,*> particularly in view of the Romans’ already noted passionate
feelings about caput and its loss. We seem to be led to the conclusion —
which another item of evidence, admittedly from a poor source,

3% From second and first cent. B.c. incest with stepmother (Val. Max. v.9.1), attempted parricide
(Sen. Clem. 1.15) but extorting money from Macedonians in Val. Max. v.8.2.

31 In Plaut. Asin. 131 the speaker threatens to take the madam of a brothel and her daughter
before the I/Iviri on a capital charge. They were presumably of servile status and the cook jokingly
threatened with prosecution before the Hlviri in Aul. 416 for being cum telo, to whit carrying a
carving-knife, must have been a slave. Despite Mommsen 1899 (F 119) 180 n. 1 there is no solid
evidence that the [Iviri had civil jurisdiction; their name suffices to suggest that theirs was a criminal
competence. 32 Clu. 38-9.

33. We know the approximate date of the institution of the I] Iviri since this is given in Livy Per. x1
in a context which places it ¢. 290-288.

* Both Pomponius (D.1.2.2.23) and Gaius (Lydus Mag. 1.26) state explicitly that the parricidi
quaestores had jurisdiction over citizens; this is implied by Festus, Parricidi Quaestores (p. 247

Lindsay).
35 To the references in n. 31 add Amph. 155.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

LUS PUBLICUM jor

supports* — that the [I Iviri probably had full summary jurisdiction only
over lower-class citizens (as well as slaves). If so, a puzzling feature about
the permanent courts would be explained, namely that, where we have
evidence, even those courts that are concerned with crimes like murder
and violence which know no class barriers, are hardly ever found dealing
with defendants of low standing and the rare exceptions can be explained
in terms of the political significance of the crime alleged.3’ The answer to
the puzzle will be that the guaestiones perpetuae were not normally
concerned with insignificant criminals — it was the business of the [[Ivir7
to deal with them.

3. The popular assemblies

Another form of criminal jurisdiction in vigour during the second
century was that of the popular assemblies. This role of the assemblies
has been a subject of hot controversy over the past fifty years; argument
has centred firstly on procedure and the role of the assembly-court,
secondly on the range of offences covered by the courts and thirdly on
the distinction of roles between the various assemblies. The procedure, if
carried out in full, could cause a trial to be protracted over parts of
several months.*® The magistrate would accuse the defendant before
three informal public meetings (contiones) and then finally before the
assembly. There is some reason to think that the three preliminary
contiones could be dispensed with, if necessary;39 the evidence also
suggests the possibility, though pace Mommsen no more than the
possibility,* that if the full procedure was followed, the third accusation
was followed by the magistrate’s sentence and an appeal by the defendant
to the people (provocatio ad populum). Against Mommsen’s view is the
total absence of any mention of provocatio in any account of a historical
capital trial or in Cicero’s account of the four accusations in the De Domo,
where he mentions the sentence but no appeal. Indeed, since Cicero
refers to the fourth accusation as an accusation and not an appeal, he
cannot be thinking of the assembly in Mommsenian terms as a court of
second instance, any more than he thinks of the sentence (éadicium) as a
real sentence. If provocatio did link the third and fourth accusations, it
must have served as a purely procedural link. It may possibly have

% Ps. Asconius on Div. Caec. 50 (=p. 201 Stangl) which suggests summary jurisdiction over cives;
and in general see Kunkel 1962 (F 92) 71-9.

3? Political reasons appear to be paramount in cases like that in 52 of M. Saufeius, Milo’s
henchman, prosecuted de vi both in Pompey’s special court and in the regular quaestio for his part in
the fracas at Bovillae which led to Clodius’ death.

38 When P. Clodius as curule aedile prosecuted Milo for vis in 56 the first aceusatio took place on 2
February, the fourth on 7 May (Cic. QFr. 11.3.1~2, 6(5).4.).

3° E.g. the trials of M. Postumius of Pyrgia (212) (Livy xxv.3) and C. Claudius Pulcher (169)
(Livy xxtit.16). © Mommsen 1899 (F 119) 163-74.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

go2 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

functioned in this way; Cicero in his De Legibus, a work which is meant to
provide a legal system that looks like the traditional second-century legal
system, gives provocatio an important, if obscure, role in assembly
prosecutions and Livy, reporting a procedure alleged to date from regal
times, mentions provocatio from magistrates with capital powers called
Iviri perduellionis. This may do no more than confirm that provocatio from
capital sentences was a topical subject for discussion in the first century
B.C. but it could also suggest that it already had some procedural
function.*! In our period, the magistrate who conducted such prosecu-
tions was most usually a tribune. Prosecutions by aediles and quaestors
are also attested.42

The vast majority of attested prosecutions before the assembly are for
perduellio, a word usually translated by ‘treason’ or ‘high treason’, but
perhaps this translation is too limiting. Livy’s story of Horatius* shows
that Livy’s source and Livy himself believed that kin-murder could
constitute perdue/lio when the murder threatened the interests of the state,
in this case by incurring the wrath of the gods towards the community
whose champion Horatius had been. In this they were probably right; no
doubt the bulk of prosecutions were concerned with treasonable
activities in some shape or form, but in principle, and sometimes in
practice, other acts that could be construed as injuring the well-being of
the community as a whole provided material for assembly
prosecutions.#

Mommsen maintained that from 449 onwards the only legitimate
forum for capital trials was the centuriate assembly, whereas the two
tribal assemblies (comitia populi tributa and concilium plebis) handled cases
where the magistrate demanded a fine.*5 Such a distinction is implied by
the Twelve Tables‘ but as the Lex Hortensia of 287 gave the plebiscites
passed by the concilium plebis the same force as the statutes passed by the
centuriate assembly, one would have expected both assemblies to
possess thereafter the same jurisdictional as well as law-making powers.

41 Cic. Dom. 45, Leg. 111.6, 12, 27; Livy 1.26, where the procedure described may well have been
invented to manufacture a precedent for Caesar’s prosecution of C. Rabirius in 63.

42 For the role of tribunes in assembly prosecution see Giovannini 1983 (F 63). Varro cites a
manual on quaestorian prosecutions (Ling. vi.go—2) and this proves that quaestors could prosecute
in some circumstances, perhaps in connexion with their treasury duties.

43 Livy 1.26, see n. 41.

44 The best example is a prosecution by the plebeian aediles in 213/12 of several matrons for
immorality (s‘uprum) reported by Livy (xxv.2z.9), since the authenticity of the information is
unimpeachable. A case, certainly late third cent., is reported in Val. Max. vi.1.7 where a curule aedile
prosecutes a tribune C. Scantinius Capitolinus for making sodomitical advances to his son, and is
doubtless basically authentic, even if Valerius has made an error over Scantinius’ magistracy.

45 Mommsen 1888 (A 77) 111.1.357-8 and 1899 (F 119) 168.

4 Twelve Tables 9.1 (Brus) states that only the conrttiatus maximus can deal with capital charges
against citizens (cf. Cic. Leg. 11.44 and 11) and the com. max. was supposed by Cicero to be the
archaic name for the comitia centuriata.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

IUS PUBLICUM 593

Livy’s account of the trial of M. Postumius Pyrgensis in 212 apparently
displays the concilium plebis dealing with a capital charge.4”7 Mommsen’s
dichotomy was at best a convention, not an inflexible rule.

Trials before an assembly, referred to in the modern literature as indicia
populi,A8 seem to have continued unabated until the 80s, when they
become rare.49 Four reasons may be suggested for this decline: firstly,
Sulla in 81 constituted or reconstituted a set of permanent courts
covering a wide range of criminal, constitutional and administrative
offences, thus rendering assembly prosecutions unnecessary. It is inter-
esting that the one non-political assembly trial that may have taken place
after the 80s involves an offence which was at the same time a flagrant
breach of mos and one not covered by any statute until the principate of
Augustus — bribing a married woman to commit adultery. Secondly,
given the existence of alternatives, the extreme cumbersomeness of an
assembly trial must have told against it; it was slow — as we have seen, a
case in 56 took up parts of four of our months. Moreover, the assemblies
had legislative and electoral functions to perform as well; citizens were
not paid to attend and employed citizens can hardly have wanted to be
perpetually away from work. With the extension of the franchise to most
of Italy and the sheer logistical difficulties involved in getting to Rome to
vote, it may have been felt that the enlarged assemblies should confine
their business to what only they could do: elect magistrates, enact
legislation and determine issues of high political significance. A fourth
reason for the decline in assembly trials was the limitations placed by
Sulla on the powers of tribunes who in the period before 81 most
commonly initiated assembly prosecutions.*! Though these powers
were restored in 70, eleven years were long enough to consolidate the
role of the new criminal courts as the main organ for handling such trials.

4. The private criminal action

There must have been some other way of dealing with non-political
crimes, above all murder, committed by citizens in the period before the
rise of the permanent criminal courts: the assemblies and the [[Iviri
simply could not have coped. Ifa slave or humble citizen could be hauled

47 See Livy xxv.3.

48 As Lintott points out in 1972 (F 102) 246-9, the ancient evidence for this technical sense of
iudicium populi is slim, though Cicero may have tried to introduce it at Brut. 106.

49 Cicero points out (Brus. 106) that the introduction of the ballot into comitial trials as a result of
the Lex Cassia of 137 made more work for defending barristers. This implies that they remained an
important part of the legal system after 137.

50 Val. Max. vi.1.8. It all depends which Q. Metellus Celer prosecuted and whether the
prosecutor was tribune or aedile at the time. One was consul in 80, the other in Go. This provides us
with possible dates of 90-83 and ¢. 72-64 for the prosecution. The cases noted in n. 44 provided
precedents. 51 Seen, 23.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

§04 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

off before a IIvir for carrying an offensive weapon, it is incredible that
other citizens could not be prosecuted for murder. Kunkel demonstrated
that there had existed since archaic times a form of private criminal
action which, if successful, led to the convicted party being handed over
to the deceased’s closest blood-relative.53 In primitive Rome he would
have undoubtedly been sacrificed to the manes of the dead man, but by
our period his fate was to become the bondsman of the agnate in much
the same way as a recalcitrant debtor became the bondsman (addictus) of
his creditor.54 The institution of the murder courts in the late second
century will have led to the disappearance of this type of prosecution.5>

J. The special courts

The last type of criminal court to be found in the middle of the second
century is the special court or commission, referred to in the modern
literature without any clear warrant in the ancient sources as the guaestio
extra ordinem ox extraordinaria. This century was in fact its heyday, but
examples of its use stretch from the latter part of the Second Punic War
down to 43.°6 Its main use was to deal with alleged crimes committed by
groups, like the Sila Forest murders of 138 or the multiple poisonings of
184.57 These special commissions set up by the Senate were regarded by
Polybius as particularly concerned with crimes committed in Italy and
outside the normal jurisdiction of city magistrates; it is certainly the case
that a large number of the recorded instances do concern crimes
committed beyond the immediate environs of Rome.*® At first these
commissions were often instituted by the Senate alone without the
sanction of a popular assembly and yet without causing any disquiet.5?
However, the use of a senatus consultum in 132 to set up a commission to
inflict capital punishment on persons convicted of being followers of
Tiberius Gracchus raised questions about the propriety of such commis-
sions and, as noted already, his brother Gaius’ /ex de capite civis made it

52 See n. 31.

53 Kunkel 1962 (F 92) 40-5, with particular reference to Serv. ad Ecl. 4.43.

4 Kunkel 1962 (F 92) 97-130, esp. 104~5 and n. 386. Livy xx11I.14.2—3 combined with Val. Max.
v1.6.1, is persuasive for Kunkel’s reconstruction.

85 Kunkel 1962 (F 92) 98-104. A childhood game, according to Plutarch (Cat. Min. 2.6) played by
the younger Cato (b. 95), is perhaps the latest possible reference to this type of bondage.

% The earliest known examples date from 206 (Livy xxvitl.10.4-5) and 204 (Livy xx1x.36.10—
12). The last was the court set up by the Lex Pedia in 43 to punish Caesar’s murderers.

57 See Cic. Brut. 85-8 for the Sila Forest murders, Livy xxx1x.41.5—G for the multiple poisonings
of 184.

58 Besides the examples cited in the previous note, cf. also Livy xu.37.4 and xLt1.2-3. Polybius
(vi.13.4) asserts the Senate’s right to deal with crimes committed in Italy; I take ‘demosia episkepsis’
to be referring to investigation by special court.

5° There is no mention of plebiscite or law setting up the special commission that dealt with the
secret cult of the Bacchanals in 186, likewise none in connexion with the various poisoning
commissions of 184, 181, 180, 179 and 167 (see Jones 1972 (F 89) 27-8 with refs).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 505

illegal to set up such courts without sanction from the people. By
adding this new compulsory hurdle, Gaius made the institution of such
special commissions a less attractive option. However, they were still
employed occasionally to deal with multiple crime especially when
committed outside Rome like the fracas at Bovillae in January 52 which
ended in the killing of P. Clodius*! or to deal with offences not covered
by any statute, like the appearance of a male in women’s clothing at the
all-female religious rites of the Bona Dea in 61.6 Another point needs to
be made about these special courts which would distinguish them from
the informal ‘courts’ of the pater familias and from the consilium of the
provincial governor and link them with the permanent criminal courts
that partly superseded them: it looks as if the magistrate was merely a
court president and the members of the commission decided the issue by
their vote.

III. QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE

Of cardinal importance for the early history of the permanent criminal
courts (quaestiones perpetuae) is a passage in Cicero’s Brutus:

[C. Papirius Carbo] was regarded as the finest advocate at that period, and, while
he dominated the bar, more courts began to be created. For guaestiones perpetuae
were established when he was a young man and there were none before — L.
Piso, as tribune of the plebs, was the first to carry a law de pecuniis repetundis
{about provincial extortion] in the consulships of Censorinus and Manilius
[= 149]...

Cicero’s Brutus is a well-researched work and he has no axe to grind here;
we should therefore start from the assumption that what he writes is
true. If so, certain consequences follow: first, Piso set up the first guaestio
perpetua and theories that they existed before 149 must be discarded.%
Secondly, Piso’s court must in some sense have been a quaestio perpetua

6 Cic. Rab. Perd. 12, Cat. 1v.10, Dom, 82. This interpretation of the Lex Sempronia, set out by
Strachan-Davidson 1912 (F 150) 1.239~45, is now generally accepted.

61 Pompey had other reasons for setting up a special court; he wanted a court immune to bribery
and to the rhetoric of barristers with plenty of time to introduce irrelevancies. Hence the stringency
exercised in selecting the jurors and limiting speeches; see above all the argumentum of Asconius (Mi/.
3§-42C).

62 Our principal source is Cicero’s letters to Atticus (1.12, 13, 14 and 16). Interestingly, the
pontifices are consulted on the morality of the act and it is only when they have declared it nefas (Att.
1.13.3) that the special commission is set up.

63 The two deferments are ‘de consilii sententia’ (Cic. Brut. 85); the change of patronus from
Laelius to Galba ‘quod is in dicendo atrocior acriorque essev’ (ébid. 86) and the latter’s playing upon
the emotions of the jury, ‘multis querelis multaque miseratione adhibita’ (ébid. 88) make it probable
that we are dealing witha jury whose verdict, not that of the presiding magistrate, decided the issue.

Cic. Brut. 106.

65 Thus Fascione 1984 (F 49) 44-51, who dates the first permanent quaestio ambitus to 139, cannot
be right.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

506 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

and any theory which assumes that C. Gracchus’ repetundae court was
the first real one is unlikely to be right.6 Thirdly, other guaestiones
perpetuae must have been set up while Carbo was a young man — Cicero’s
phrase ‘hoc adulescente’ could cover a longer span than the above
translation might suggest, since adulescentia covers from the late teens to
the age of forty, but, all the same, since Carbo was born about 160 and
died in 119, it is impossible that only the repetundae court existed until
towards the end of the century and highly unlikely that only that single
quaestio perpetua existed before the tribunates of C. Gracchus.® Another
reason for thinking that a number of permanent courts were in existence
at least by about 120 is Cicero’s reference to the appearance of
professional prosecutors in the immediately post-Gracchan period:
defence barristers were useful in an assembly trial, but only magistrates
could prosecute in the assembly. Cicero’s reference must therefore be to
the permanent courts, or indicia publica, to use the conventional phrase
for such courts and trials before them, since it was one of their
distinguishing features that in virtually every one of them any citizen in
good standing could prosecute.’° The appearance of barristers specializ-
ing in prosecution consequently indicates the existence of a number of
indicia publica in which they could practise their skills.

The revolutionary element in Piso’s new court was that it both had a
defined field and was always available for use; the extortion of money by
governors of the Spanish provinces had been the subject of special
procedures in 171, but this was the first time that a permanent court was
established to deal with cases as they occurred. In other respects it was a
transitional institution. It may well have offered a remedy only to Roman
citizens living in the provinces and not to non-Roman provincials.?!
Prosecution in Piso’s new court had to be initiated by the /egis actio
sacramento procedure associated with the civil courts” and this procedure
was only available to Roman citizens. However, in view of the precedent
of 171 and the unbroken tradition that repetundae legislation was for the
benefit of the provincials, it is more plausible to assume, despite the
difficulties, that the provincials as well as Roman citizens resident in the
provinces were the intended beneficiaries of the statute and that, as in

6 See Eder 1969 (F 46) 101-19, for the view that the statute was an ingenious device of Piso’s
with no influence at all on the later quaestiones perpetuae.

67 Pace A. H. M. Jones 1972 (F 89) 54-5.

68 Brut. 130: he mentions M. Brutus and L. Caesulenus.

6 As Jones points out, late Republican Romans also used the phrase ‘udicium publicum of less
formal ad hoc tribunals (A. H. M. Jones 1972 (F 89)).

70 Any citizen in good standing could prosecute in a quaestio perpetua except in the pre-Gracchan
repetundae court and Sulla’s quaestio de iniuriis or whichever quaestio heard cases of criminal iniuria.

Thus Richardson 1987 (F 130). On 171 see Richardson in ch. 15 below, pp. 577-8.

2 Lex de repetundis on ‘Tabula Bembina’ (Brans, no. 10; FIR A 1.7), hereinafter /ex rep., 23. Fora
history of repetundae legislation, see Lintott 1981 (F 104).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 5O7

171, Roman citizens were assigned to represent non-Roman individuals
or communities in proceedings at Rome. The most likely candidate for
the role of patron (patronus) would be the patronus whom each commun-
ity already possessed to represent their interests at Rome. Under the
Gracchan repetundae law the /egis actio procedure was dropped and the
injured provincial could prosecute in his own right. Furthermore, under
Piso’s law in the event of conviction the defendant had to do no more
than make restitution — there was no penal element in the sentence. We
do not know anything for certain about the jury except that it must have
been drawn from the senatorial order.’3 It was probably small, as were
the later senatorial juries,’4 but it is by no means certain that it consisted
merely of the five or so recuperatores who operated in some civil actions.’5
Other features first attested in the Gracchan repetundae statute,’6 notably
provision for retrial (amp/iatio) in the event of more than a third of the
jury voting Non Liquet (Not Proven), and the method of assessing
damages (/itis aestimatio), could well go back to the Lex Calpurnia.
What was it about the situation in 149 that made a novel form of court
appear desirable? The full title of the court, de pecuniis repetundis, and
indeed the penalty, suggest that the court’s purpose was to provide a
permanent mechanism for enabling provincials, or at any rate Roman
citizens resident in the provinces, to get back money or the money
equivalent of goods stolen from them by governors and their assoct-
ates.’’ In the very same year as Piso’s statute was passed there was an
unsuccessful attempt to set up a special court to prosecute Ser. Sulpicius
Galba for massacring or selling into slavery some Lusitanians who had
sued for peace. The statute may have been a response, if a rather feeble
one, to this situation as well as to complaints about extortion, for,
however useless to provincials in the Lusitanians’ situation, the legisla-
tion did at least serve as a warning to men like Galba that the Senate
intended to keep a permanent watch on the conduct of governors. Its
feebleness can be gauged from the fact that we know of four acquittals

73 All our sources for C. Gracchus’ judiciary arrangements (except possibly Tac. Ann. x11.Go) at
least imply that he made some change which either eliminated or diluted senatorial participation;
Diod. xxxv.25 and Vell. Pat. 11.32 state explicitly that senators manned the juries before Gracchus’
legislation.

™ During the immediately post-Sullan period of wholly senatorial juries their size was small; Cic.
Verr. 1.30 implies a repefundae court jury of not much more than eight, doubtless an underestimate,
but incompatible with a large jury. The jury before which Oppianicus was tried in 74 numbered 32
(Cic. Clu, 74). There is no reason to suppose that the Calpurnian juries were any larger.

73 Recuperatorial juries are posited by some because the praetor who was to be governor of Spain
assigned recuperatores in 171 when Spanish envoys complained about the rapacity of a number of
earlier Roman governors, the closest precedent; but the sources referred to in n. 73 imply no generic
differences between pre- and post-Gracchan juries other than the class of person manning them.

% Lex rep. 47 (ampliatio), 58. (litis aestimatio).

7 Cic. u Verr. 4.17; Livy xtut.2; Galba and the Lusitanians: Livy Epit. and Oxyr. Epit. xu1x;
Val. Max. vit.1. Abso/. 2; Cic. Brut. 89, De Or. 1.227; Liguria in 173: Livy xi11.8-9, 10.9-11.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

508 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

regarded as scandalous’8 and of only one possible conviction under the
law:’9 a community’s patronus would not necessarily be its most persua-
sive advocate. But we should beware of assuming that the statute was no
more than a cynical device to fob off provincials with an intentionally
useless institution, while governors went on fleecing them.® The satirist
Lucilius appears to have called the statute brutal (saeva)®! and even
senators could demonstrate indignation at the malpractices of some of
their peers.®

Next in the field of repetundae legislation comes a Lex Iunia of which
we know no more than the name and then a /ex repetundarum of which
substantial fragments have survived on one side of the surviving pieces
of the ‘Tabula Bembina’. Date and authorship of this statute have been
the subject of controversy; Mommsen identified it with a Lex Acilia
repetundarum mentioned by Cicero (Verr. 1.51) and maintained that it
was part of C. Gracchus’ legislative programme. Despite attempts to
give the statute a later date, Mommsen was certainly right to date it to
123 Or 122; modern scholars are less confident about ascribing it to M’.
Acilius Glabrio and I shall refer to it as the Gracchan repetundae statute.83

The new statute was altogether much tougher than the Calpurnian /ex;
instead of simple restitution, double the value of the property misappro-
priated was the penalty. Non-citizens could now sue in their own right;
indeed the statute positively encouraged non-citizens to initiate prosecu-
tions by granting them a choice of Roman citizenship or a right to
provocatio, if they were successful. Procedure was simplified: the /egis actio
procedure, intended for citizens and thus inappropriate for allies and
provincials, was therefore dropped and plaintiffs henceforth simply laid
information against the defendant before the praetor (nominis delatio):
laying information before the presiding judge became standard pro-
cedure for quaestio prosecutions. Jury-membership ceased to be a
senatorial prerogative; non-senators provided the panel of 450 from
which the 50 jurors required for a trial were to be taken.

Two of the aims of the new extortion law are virtually self-evident.
Firstly, Gracchus wished to protect Latins, socéi, friends and subjects of
the Roman people from exploitation by holders of imperium, senators
and their families; it is clear that if earlier legislation had been intended to

78 App. BCiv. 1.22 mentions the acquittals of L. Aupelins Cotta, Livius Salinator and M’.
Aquillius; App. Hisp. 79 adds Q. Pompeius.

79 Valerius Maximus (1x.6.10) attests the conviction of L. Cornelius Lentulus Lupus (cos. 156),
‘lege Caecilia repetundarum’. Mommsen 1899 (F 119) 708n. 3, is almost certainly right (pace Bauman
1983 (F 178) 205 and n. 369) in regarding this as a mistake for ‘lege Calpurnia.’

8 The view of Eder 1969 (F 46) 58-101. 81 Fr. 573 (Marx).

82 Cf. the attitude of Senate and natural father to D. lunius Silanus’ conduct towards the
provincials of Macedonia as reported in Val. Max. v.8.2.

83 For the arguments see Stockton 1979 (c 137) 230-5 and Lintott 1981 (F 104) 182-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 509

help provincials as well as Roman citizens living in the provinces, it had
not worked — delegates from the provinces were loud in complaint over
acquittals due to bribery.84

A second aim of the statute must have been a diminution in some sense
of the Senate’s standing. Repetundae was a crime which only a senator
could commit and the penalty for committing it had been stiffened.
Again, by transferring membership of the jury from senators to non-
senators, Gracchus was at the very least registering a vote of no
confidence in senatorial juries. He may have wished to do no more than
give the provincials greater confidence in a fair trial than they could ever
have had when defendants were tried by their peers. If so, the diminution
of senatorial power might be felt, even by senators, to be counterba-
lanced by the greater tranquillity to be anticipated in the provinces. It
certainly looks as if the Gracchan repetundae court and its new jury were
not particularly controversial, since, despite the ferocious anti-Gracchan
reaction which involved the murder of the tribune and many of his
associates, the /ex was not repealed.

A more radical suggestion is that C. Gracchus intended to establish in
the equestrian order an alternative, though lesser, centre of political
power and by so doing to diminish the power of the Senate in a more
positive sense.85 This involves consideration of the qualifications for
membership of the panel of jurymen for the Gracchan repetundae court
and consideration of the homogeneity of the equestrian order. The
jurymen must have been eguites in some sense of the word and
presumably in one of the two senses of the word current in Cicero’s day:
(1) persons with a capital of 400,000 sesterces or above; (ii) persons with
that capital who belonged to the eighteen centuries of citizens entitled to
the public horse.86 The simplest conclusion is that (ii) were eguztes in the
strict, (i) in a looser sense, This would explain why the ‘ordo’ of ¢ribuni
aerarti which provided a third of the members of the jury panels under
the Lex Aurelia of 70 (the other two-thirds being provided by the Senate
and the equestrian order) could be regarded by Cicero sometimes as
distinct from and sometimes as part of the equestrian order:8’ the ¢ribuni
aerarii had the 400,000 sesterces but not the right to the equus publicus.
This makes it somewhat more likely that the qualification for the
Gracchan juror was entitlement to the eguus publicus.

More important is the question whether or not the Gracchan jurors

% App. BCip. 1.22.1. 85 See ch. 3 p. 81.

% For eques=person entitled to the public horse, see esp. Cic. Phil. vt.13, vit.16-17; for
eques = possessor of the financial qualification, see Cic. Rose. com 42 and 48; Hor. Ep. 1.1.57; see also
material in n. 87.

§? Cicero includes the tribuni aerarii in the equites at Font. 36, Clu. 121, Flace. 4 and 96 and
elsewhere, but treats them as a separate ordo at Cat. 11.16, 1v.15 and elsewhere. See Brunt 1988 (a 19)
210-11.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

510 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

formed in any sense a homogeneous social or political group, or even
contained within their midst a body with interests running counter to
those of the senatorial order, supposing that the senatorial order was
itself homogeneous. Fortunately, this is a question to which one can
produce a reasonably certain answer; the equestrian order in the wider
sense was not a homogeneous pressure group. At the top end one can
find equites like C. Lucilius, and senators like M. Caelius and Cicero
himself, with relatives in the other order; there were landed knights and
senators who engaged discreetly in commercial activity.®8 Again, it is
only between 106 and 70 that control of the courts becomes the subject of
political controversy; the literary sources connect dissatisfaction with
senatorial juries primarily with their openness to bribery, particularly in
repetundae cases, while dissatisfaction with equestrian juries is connected
with the activities of the pub/icani, men who farmed the provincial taxes
on behalf of the government.® Clearly, their interests and those of the
governor did not necessarily coincide, since the former wished to
maximize their profits, while the latter wanted a peaceful province. But
to judge from our admittedly scanty source-material this particular clash
of interests was almost entirely a feature of the 90s; in the 80s the struggle
between Sulla and the Marians and Cinnani and the Mithridatic War put
the desire for peace and stability felt by both parties well above any
divergence of interests.

Accordingly, the radical theory that C. Gracchus intended the
equestrian order to form an alternative political power-group to the
Senate is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the equestrian
order. In general, its members as propertied citizens shared the same
interests as senators; however, it ought to have been possible for them to
adopt a more detached attitude to repetundae cases since by definition it
was a crime they could not themselves commit. To retroject back to the
120s the situation which arose twenty years later not only attributes to
Gracchus an improbable degree of foresight; it also attributes to him a
scheme of pointless malice. What could have been the point of rescuing
provincials from rapacious governors and their staffs in order to subject
them to the more systematic rapacity of the publicani? No doubt, the
Gracchan /ex repetundarum did make it possible for the pub/icani to punish
governors who tried too vigorously to protect provincials from their
extortionate activities, but we should not confuse result with intention.

By this time, other permanent quaestiones had come, or were coming,

88 See Beard and Crawford 1985 (a 6) 47 andn. 19.

89 For the susceptibility of second-century senatorial juries to bribery see App. BCiv. 1.22.2 and,
for the period between 80 and 70, Gruen 1974 (Cc 209) 30-4. Dissatisfaction with equestrian juries
before the trial of Rutilius as well as after: Vell. Pat. 11.13, for after 92, see Cic. ap. Asc. Sc. 21¢, Florus
1.5, Livy Epit. 70, App. BCw. 1.35.7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 511

into being: a court inter sicarios, dealing with professional killers using
an offensive weapon, probably also a court concerned with poisoning (de
veneficiés) and another concerned with electoral corruption (ambitus),
existed by the late 120s. It has been suggested that Gracchus manned
these other courts with a mixture of senators and knights, but it is
probable that, like the repetundae court, they were now manned wholly by
non-senators.®! Plutarch’s view, like another to be found elsewhere in
Plutarch and the epitomator of Livy? that Gracchus enrolled 300
(Plutarch) or 600 (the epitomator) knights in the Senate and manned the
courts from this composite body, is probably an anachronism. If
Plutarch’s report does reflect authentic tradition, then mixed juries may
have marked atransitional stage in the shift from senatorial to equestrian
control of thé courts (perhaps introduced by the Lex Iunia)® or else a
project considered by the tribune but subsequently dropped in favour of
the more radical scheme embodied in the hex repetundarum.

A consequence of the appearance of other guaestiones is a decline in the
significance of the repetundae court; by 81 it was merely one of a group,
and, as we shall see, trials for murder were much more frequent.
However, for the sake of completeness rather than special significance,
we may bring repetundae legislation down to the final statute of 59.

The Lex Servilia Caepionis of 106 is sometimes called a /ex repetun-
darume but none of the ancient sources treats it as other than a judiciary
law. Two sources, probably reflecting an epitome of Livy, state that the
consul Q. Servilius Caepio had a bill passed which introduced mixed
senatorial and equestrian juries.°* The other sources either state or imply
that Caepio restored the courts to the Senate. Neither view is
impossible, but the second view is more likely for two reasons; the
epitomators of Livy have a bad reputation as sources for Roman
constitutional history and Cicero’s references to the intense hatred of the
knights for the statute®* make better sense if Caepio’s bill removed the
knights altogether from jury-membership; moreover, he quotes from a
speech in support of Caepio’s bill which refers to the equestrian judges

® For the dates, see below pp. 5 14ff.

% Cic, Verr. 1.38; Tac. Ann. x11.60. Also App. BCiv. 1.22.2; Diod. xxxv.25; Florus 11.1; Vell. Pat.
1.6.3, 13.2 and 32.3; by implication, Pliny HN. xxxtt.34. Against: Plut. Comparison of Agis and
Chomrenes and the Gracchi, z, but the evidence of Cicero backed by Tacitus should be decisive.

® Livy Epit. ux; Plut. C. Gracch., 5.1.

® Thus Jones 1960 (F 88) 39-42; the alternative is accepted ‘without any warm conviction’ by
Stockton 1979 (c 137) 142, full discussion 138-53, with references.

“ This view is general today; it derives from Cassiod. Chron. = Obsequens 41. The latter certainly
used an epitome of Livy; the almost identical wording suggests that Cassiodorus used the same
Epitome. However, Cic. Balb. 54 may imply that Caepio’s law was a /ex repetundarum; see Ferrary
1977 (C 49) 85-91.

% Tac. Ann. x1t.6o explicitly; by implication, in addition to the passages noted in the text, Cic.
Clu. 140, De Or. 11.199. % Inv. Rhet. 1.92; De Or. 11.199.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

g12 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

and professional prosecutors together as men whose cruelty can only be
slaked by senatorial blood,’ tactless as well as violent language if
knights were still to form half of each jury.

On the other hand, another Lex Servilia, the work of C. Servilius
Glaucia, certainly was a judiciary law and a /ex repetundarum; not only
does Asconius, a fairly reliable witness, style it a /ex repetundarum but
Cicero attests that it introduced the compulsory division of repetundae
trials into two sessions of actiones, a device known as comperendinatio.® If
we are right about the first Lex Servilia and it was a judiciary law, not
specifically a lex repetundarum, then the Lex Servilia that made the
receivers of misappropriated moneys as well as the misappropriators
themselves guilty of repetundae was Glaucia’s.® There is little doubt,
however, that he also revoked Caepio’s law and restored equestrian
control to all the courts.1© The date of Glaucia’s statute is uncertain since
the date of his tribunate is itself problematical; any date between 106 and
100, the date of his praetorship, is conceivable. An earlier rather than a
later date is suggested by Cicero’s assertion that the equestrian order
furnished judges for nearly half a century,!9! i.e. 122—81. The longer the
Lex Caepionis remained in force the less true that statement becomes and
thus of the favoured dates, 104 and 1o1, the former is preferable.

There were two more extortion statutes in the late Republic, one
introduced by Sulla in 81 and the last by Caesar in 59. It cannot be proved
that Sulla made any changes in the law apart from returning the court to
senatorial control; his /ex repetundarum was one of a series of statutes
constituting or reconstituting permanent courts and the content need
not have been different from that of Glaucia’s law. In connexion with
Caesar’s lex repetundarum Cicero mentions a clause which was common to
all three laws.!02 However, a reference in Cicero to a trial under the Lex
Cornelia in or around 70 suggests that the law had moved in two
different ways: P. Septimius Scaevola was accused of wrongs unspecified
committed in Apulia and of taking bribes at the trial of Oppianicus in 74.
The prosecution tried to increase the penalty from damages to capital, !%
The case shows that repetundae now covered judicial corruption as well as
misconduct in a province and that it could in certain circumstances be a
capital offence.

The word ‘capital’ (capztalis) in Roman public law has a rather peculiar
sense; we have already noted that caput, the noun from which the
adjective is derived, literally ‘head’, means ‘citizen rights’ as well as ‘life’,
and in the late Republic a citizen of standing convicted on a capital

97 De Or. 1.225. 98 Asc. 210; Cic. mm Verr. 1.26.

%® Cic. Rab. Post. 8-9. The structure of Cicero’s comments also points to the Lex Glauciae.
100 By implication Cic. Brut. 224, Scaur. 2.

101 Verr. 1.38. For the date of Glaucia’s statute see Ferrary 1977 (C 49) 101-3.

102 See the passage referred to in n. 99 above. 103 Clu. 115-16.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 513

charge whether in an assembly-court or in guaestio perpetua hardly ever
lost his life.!°4 He went into exile. A statute or plebiscite passed by the
concilium plebis, probably annually, prevented such exiles from returning
home by interdicting them by name from water and fire (énterdictio aquae
et ignis). Eventually, for perhaps all capital offences, the penalty came to
be defined formally as interdiction.!05 Caesar is known to have pres-
cribed interdiction as the penalty for conviction in two other quaes-
tiones'°6 and it is reasonable to suppose that hedid the same for the quaestio
repetundarum in his statute of 59. In Caesar’s hands repetundae came to
include quasi-constitutional restrictions on a governor’s powers, some
of these, like forbidding him to make war or enter the kingdom ofan ally
without authorization from Senate and people, duplicating material in
Sulla’s treason statute. Caesar’s law also limited the governor’s powers
of requisition and his right to issue free travel passes (dip/lomata). It would
also seem to have been more comprehensive in the field of judicial and
administrative corruption than any of its predecessors.!°7 Caesar’s
statute was the last of a series that had begun with the Lex Calpurnia of
149 and formed the basis for the treatment of repetundae under the
Empire.

In two ways the extortion court remained untypical of the quaestiones
perpetuae. Procedurally it was unusual: the division into two sessions
(actzones) may have been unique and the quaestzo peculatus may have been
the only other guaestio to conclude with a sis aestimatio (assessment of
damages). Secondly, it may also have been unique until the Augustan age
in being a court trying both capital and non-capital offences. In other
respects it was characteristic. It came into being to deal with a specific set
of problems — the complaints of citizens, and probably also allies and
provincials against governors and their officials, particularly in Spain,
where their discontent was helping to keep a war going that the Romans
seemed unable to win. A second reason for the court became more
significant with the passing of time, until many of the new provisions of
the Lex Iulia reflect it: the need to regulate the conduct of the governor
and his staff. The institution of the guaestiones highlights the various ways

104 The only known cases in our period of persons convicted on a capital charge actually being
put to death are those of Publicius Malleolus in 101 (Awsct. ad Her. 1.23 and Cic. Inv. Rhet. 11.149) and
apparently Q. Varius Hybrida in 89 (Cic. Brut. 305 and Na¢. D. 111.81). The circumstances of Varius’
death are mysterious, while Malleolus was convicted of matricide and the death penalty could be
inflicted on persons found guilty of parricidium.

105 Pace Levick 1979 (F 99) in view of Ulpian’s explicit statement in Collatioxu1.5.1 and the passage
cited in n. 106 below. Cic. 1 Verr. 2.100 suggests that an annual edict by the tribunes listed by name
those exiles who were interdicted.

106 Cic. Pbil. 1.23 refers to statutes of Caesar which order (/ubent) that a person convicted of vis,
likewise a person convicted of maiestas, be interdicted from water and fire (agua et igni interdici).

107 Cic. Pis. is perhaps the best single ancient source (esp. 61, 87 and go), but Cic. Féacc. 13, 21 and
27 contains useful information.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

514 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

in which wos maiorum could no longer cope with the transformation of
Rome from small city state to mighty capital with its empire. Some
quaestiones were set up because of the breakdown of social controls,!98 but
this one is the product of a situation for which mos provided no
guidelines.

In one final respect first-century repetundae legislation is characteristic,
namely its illogicality. Since repetundae is primarily concerned with the
misconduct of governors, it is easy to see why the crime should come to
include ‘constitutional’ elements like taking an army outside a province
without instructions from Rome, but why should it come to include the
corruption of jurors by bribery? The answer must surely lie in the
piecemeal institution of the quaestiones; for some purposes, there were too
many of them. Suppose that a prosecutor wished to arraign a defendant
on a number of criminal charges, he had theoretically to prosecute in
each of the appropriate courts. This did in fact happen from time to
time,!° but it was tiresome. Prosecutors tackled the problem of multiple
charges by introducing matter that was strictly speaking irrelevant to the
charge they were actually bringing.!!° Legislators dealt with it by
tagging on offences which were quite commonly associated. For
example, the quaestio de repetundis was particularly open to bribery since
the retention of large sums of money or their equivalent in valuables
could be at stake. Hence the inclusion of corrupt acquittal as well as
corrupt condemnation as an offence under the law."!! On the other hand,
it was only malpractices involving the conviction of an innocent man on
a capital charge that came within the scope of the quaestio de sicariis (the
court which dealt mainly with murder), as was proper, since such
malpractices are a form of judicial murder.!!2 Similarly, there was an
overlap between repetundae and maiestas (treason). Taking an army out of
one’s province or making war without instructions from the Roman
people and Senate were ‘constitutional’ offences under both Sulla’s
treason law and Caesar’s extortion law.'!3

Any account of the criminal courts at Rome must be arbitrary, given
their capacity for overlap, but it makes sense to deal next with a group of
courts which, like the quaestio repetundarum, were all concerned with
offences committed by senators in their public capacity and were all
probably in existence before Sulla’s comprehensive criminal legislation

108 Vis legislation is the obvious example; Crassus’ statute of 55 punishing the organizers of
political clubs is another.

10 For example, in 52 Milo was condemned first of all for vis and then for ambitus.

110M. Caelius in 56 was prosecuted for vis, but two of the alleged offences, involvement in sedstio
at Naples and arranging an attack on an Alexandrian embassy in Puteoli, though certainly examples
of vis, occurred outside Rome and were thus probably not matter for the court; on the other hand,
the murder of Dio and the alleged attempted poisoning of Clodia both took place in Rome, but
strictly belonged to the quaestio de sicartis et veneficiis!

1 Cic. Pés. 87. "2 Cic. Clu. 148. 113 Cic. Pls. 50.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 515

of 81. Peculatus, the misappropriation of public money, and sacrilegium,
the stealing of sacred objects from temples, an offence subsumed under
peculatus, come closest to repetundae.''4

It is certain that Sulla constituted or reconstituted a quaestio peculatus in
81.115 Pompey was prosecuted for pecu/atus in 86, but Plutarch’s account
is So inexact that one cannot be certain whether it took place in a indicium
publicum ox indicium populi. The fact that a praetor seems to have presided
and that it is unlikely to have been a special commission, makes the
former alternative the more likely, and, if so, then we trace the guaestio
peculatus back as far as 86, though no further.'!6 It has not even much of a
mythical history: Camillus is prosecuted in the assembly for misappro-
priating spoils ¢. 390 in circumstances similar to Pompey’s in 86, but the
word peculatus is not used.'!7 Our next crime, ambitus, has been supplied
with a much better pedigree.

Ambitus is untranslatable: roughly speaking, it denotes the making by
a candidate for office of the wrong sort of approaches to the electorate,
most often involving bribery. However, other forms of intrigue are
included. Cicero attests the existence of a quaestio ambitus in 66118 and this
must be the guaestio envisaged by the Lex Calpurnia of the previous year
which increased the penalty from ten years’ exclusion from office to
perpetual incapacity.!!9 There existed a guaestio ambitus before the Lex
Calpurnia, however; Plutarch reports that Marius was prosecuted for
ambitus when standing for the praetorship in 116. As usual, the
biographer’s account demonstrates his indifference to legal niceties, but
one thing is decisive for the trial being before a gaaestio perpetua and not
an assembly-court ~ Marius was acquitted on a tied vote.!20 Such a thing
could not happen in an assembly-court where voting was by blocks,
either centuries or tribes, and even if the full total voted, the odd
numbers involved (193 centuries, 35 tribes) made a tie impossible. A tied
vote could, and did, occur in a quaestio trial.!2! Precisely when this guaestio
was established is a matter for conjecture only; the establishment of the
first quaestio de repetundis in 149 furnishes a ferminus post quem, the Lex
Cornelia Baebia of 181 and the Lex Cornelia Fulvia of 159 attest concern
over ambitus, though not, pace Fascione, the setting up of a permanent

114 So much so that it is not always clear to which of the two crimes a Greek source is referring:
e.g. Plut. Lue. 1.2. Klopé could be either, though probably in this instance repetundae.

115 The court existed in 66, see Cic. Clu. 147. Cic. Naf. D. 111.74 is decisive for a Sullan court. The
dramatic date of that dialogue is 77-75 and nova lege could only refer to the Sullan legislation of 81,
especially as the other two references are to the quaestio de sicariis and quaestio testamentaria nummaria,
which we know to have been respectively reconstituted and constituted by Sulla.

N6 Plut. Pomp. 4.

"7 Pliny HN xxxtv.13; Plut. Cas. 12.1-3; see also Mommsen 1899 (F 119) 765 n. 5.

M8 Cic. Clu. 147.

"9 Schol. Bob. on Cic. Sufl. 17 (p. 78 Stangl).

12 Plut. Mar. 5.5.

121 E.g. when M. Servilius was charged with repetundae in 51 (Cic. [Cael.] Fam. vitt.8.3).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

516 13. THE-CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

court de ambitu in 159.'22 We have noted already that Cicero is quite
unequivocal on the existence of a number of permanent criminal courts
by ¢. 120. We can go no further than to assert that a quaestio ambitus was
set up between 149 and 120.

Between the initial statute establishing the court and the Lex Calpur-
nia of 67 there was probably a Sullan statute. In favour of this view is the
fact that in all other cases where we know for certain of pre-Sullan
quaestiones (e.g. the quaestio maiestatis, quaestio de sicariis, quaestio de
repetundis), Sulla reconstituted the guaestio in 81 and so we would expect
him to have done the same for the quaestio ambitus, moreover, there is a
reference in the scholia on Cicero Su//. 17 to a Lex Cornelia passed in
earlier times (superioribus temporibus) which banned defendants convicted
of ambitus from standing for office for ten years.!23 Subsequent legisla-
tion attests a continued concern with ambitus, the scholia provide
evidence that Cicero’s own Lex Tullia of 63 increased the penalty to ten
years’ interdiction from Rome and Italy. In 52 Pompey altered the
procedural rules so as to make it easier to secure a conviction; he also

robably increased the penalty to interdiction for life.!24 However, these
P y P y >
measures may have been temporary, for Pompey may well have simply
established a special court concerned with electoral malpractices alleg-
edly committed in 53 and 52; his quaestio de vi was undoubtedly a special
coutt.

References to ambitus trials in the late Republic are frequent; even the
gos, a decade for which evidence for anything is sparse, yield two or three
examples.!25 For the period between the Gos and the qos a considerable

P ane? : gos a
number of cases is attested.!26 We would in any case have inferred from
the amount of ambitus legislation that there was increasing concern over
electoral malpractice.

If we want to probe more deeply into the reasons behind ambitus
legislation, we need to look at the two items of information in Livy about
early ambitus statutes; there are two of these, one attached to the year 432
which is manifestly fictional (1v.25.9-14) and the second to 358, a Lex
Poetelia which could be genuine (vil.15.12-13). What matters is the

122 Lex Cornelia Baebia: Livy xz.19.11; Lex Cornelia Fulvia: Livy Epit. xivir. Neither passage
tells us anything more than that a /ex ambitus was passed. Fascione 1984 (F 49) 44-56.

123 pb, 78 Stangl. The scholiast’s point of reference is the Lex Calpurnia of 67, which makes
superioribus temporibus surprising if he is referring to a Sullan law. Nevertheless, the view that Sulla
reconstituted the court is probably correct and Fascione wrong to suppose that the reference is to
the Lex Cornelia Fulvia.

124 Asc. Mil. 39C.

125 The trial of M. Antonius in 97 (Cic. De Or. 11.274); the trial of L. Marcius Philippus in 92
(Florus 11.5.5.); the trial of P. Sextius, date uncertain, but perhaps ¢. 91 (Cic. Brut. 180).

126 The prosecutions of P. Autronius and P. Sulla in 66 were particularly notorious, see Cic. Sul/.
1, 49-50, 88—-go; Sall. Caf. 18.2 and elsewhere. The ambitus trial of L. Murena in 63 is well

documented (Cic. Mur. passim). All four consular candidates in 54 were charged with ambitus (Cic.
Alf. 1v.17.5 and 18.3).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE $17

motivation produced by Livy’s sources. For that they had to rely on their
own imaginations in the absence of more than minimal information, and
this is likely to reflect the motivation behind the legislation of their own
times. The motivation for the 432 law is the failure of plebeian candidates
to get elected to the consular tribunate because of patrician appeals and
menaces; this presumably mirrors the complaints of populares about the
pressures placed upon the electorate by the optimates in the second and
first centuries B.c. aimed at keeping outsiders out of curule offices. The
motivation alleged for the Lex Poetelia is completely different and more
suggestive; the statute, so Livy says, was aimed at novi homines, men
without curule office holders among their ancestors, who were trying to
attract the rural voter. It is hard not to connect this motivation with the
prosecution of C. Marius in 116, since Marius was the archetypal novus
homo and, what is more, a man from the country, a #uniceps of Arpinum.
One can therefore discern from Livy two motives behind ambitus
legislation or prosecutions — first, a desire to prevent excesses by
traditional candidates, and secondly, to keep outsiders out. Wealth and
empire were distorting the workings of cHentela whereby clients, in
return for services rendered, were expected to vote for their patron or
their patron’s candidate; a client could be tempted to support another
nobilis or even a novus homo if financial incentives were offered; despite the
sparseness of the record, there is evidence of increasing liveliness at
elections in the second century. This suggests the breaking-down of the
system, if indeed it ever operated with the smooth and elegant recipro-
city supposed by some scholars;!27 hence, in part, the sudden outbreak of
legislation on the subject.

A sub-species of ambitus legislation was a statute introduced by
Crassus in 55, the Lex Licinia de sodaliciis. This statute was aimed at
those who organized associations (sodalicia, sodalitates) to secure the
election of candidates by bribery. Clodius had with considerable success
manipulated the co/legia, trade guilds and religious/social clubs, during
his tribunate in 58, but the soda/itates, organized ona tribal basis and with
recognized heads, clearly provided a simpler medium for organizing
bribery. The statute was aimed at the organizers, not the sodalitates
themselves or their ordinary members. Crassus’ statute may also have
replaced Cicero’s ambitus legislation. The penalty was ‘capital’ in the
Roman sense and, as the prosecutor had the major say in the membership
of the jury, conviction of defendants ought to have been easier than
under the ambitus legislation preceding it.128

'27 For 185 see Livy xxx1x.32.5—24; for 166 see Obsequens 12. For the workings of clientela see
Brunt 1988 (a 1) 382-442.

128 Cic. Plane. 36—47, but the whole of the pro Plancio is of value for information on this statute.
See now Ausbiittel 1982 (F 11).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

518 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

Maiestas, shorthand for maiestas populi Romani minuta or ‘diminishing
the majesty of the Roman people’, is a crime which has affinities both
with repetundae and the group of crimes against the person with which we
shall be concerned next. The affinities with repetundae lie not only in the
overlap of fields already noted but in the fact that maiestas probably
applied only to magistrates and senators.!29 But maiestas also overlaps
with vis, since, at least eventually, it came to include sedition which had
been a part of vis from the beginning. The subject of mazestas thus forms a
useful bridge between the two main areas of Roman public law — crimes
normally restricted to senators and crimes that could be committed by
any citizen, though, as has been said, persons prosecuted were usually
citizens of some substance.

The early history of maiestas raises two serious difficulties. The first is
concerned with the relationship between maiestas (minuta) and perduellio.
Both these expressions are regularly translated ‘treason’; what, then, is
the difference between them and why was it necessary to introduce a
quaestio maiestatis when the primary jurisdictional function of the
assembly courts was to handle perdue/lio cases? The second problem is the
date of the first permanent quaestio maiestatis. Sulla’s quaestio of 81 was
certainly a quaestio perpetua but we know of two earlier courts, one set up
by a Lex Appuleia of 103 or 101-100 and a second by a Lex Varia of 90;
were these special or permanent courts? The first of these courts, set up
by the tribune L. Appuleius Saturninus, was probably a permanent
court; Valerius Maximus refers to it as a publica quaestio. It was still
operating when C. Norbanus was prosecuted before it — between 96 and
91.130 It had an equestrian jury, as did other contemporary permanent
courts.!3! These arguments are not overwhelming; special courts could
have equestrian juries, special courts could continue their work for
longer than a year!32 and Valerius’ language may be imprecise. Neverthe-
less, special quaestiones are usually concerned with some specific occur-
rence and if the popu/aris Saturninus had set up a special quaestio for some
specific purpose, this could hardly have been to enable optimates to attack
populares like Norbanus! Consequently, his court was more probably a
quaestio perpetua.

The Lex Varia of 90 (or possibly late 91) is also a puzzle; it is assumed
to be a maiestas statute because M. Aemilius Scaurus was accused of
proditio under it'33 but it is a little strange that Cicero uses the word

129 This was certainly the case under Sulla’s waiestas law, see Mommsen 1899 (F 119) 710-11; it
was probably true for earlier maiestas legislation, see Bauman 1967 (F 16) 87-8.

130 Val. Max. viii.5.2. for the phrase publica quaestio and for the trial of C. Norbanus before it; for
the trial of Norbanus under the Lex Appuleia cf. also Cic. De Or. 11.107.

13t See Cic. De Or. 11.199.

132 Cic. Brut. 128 for equestrian juries; Livy xL.19.9-10 for a special quaestio being carried over
from 182 to 181. 133 Cic. ap. Asc. Seaur. 22. Corn. 73C.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 519

proditio and not maiestas. The sources agree that it was aimed at those
whose assistance and advice were partly responsible for the allies taking
up arms against Rome in the Social War.!¥ In view of this specificity it ts
somewhat more probable that the Lex Varia set up a special commission
which continued to operate during the Social War,'35 but one cannot
exclude the possibility that its purpose was to add a clause on proditio to
Saturninus’ law and extend the purview of his court.

To return to our first, and even tougher, problem: what can have been
Saturninus’ motive in establishing a guaestio maiestatis? Not to create ex
nibilo a new crime. It is quite likely that diminishing the majesty of the
Roman people already constituted a form or part of perduellio! and in
any case the concept perduellio which ranged from treason to harming the
well-being of the state was already so broad that it could easily embrace
maiestas. lf the answer does not lie in the nature of the crime, it must lie in
the nature of the court. Unlike an assembly-court, a guaestio perpetua had
at this date a jury composed solely of eguites. Unlike special commissions
it was always there. It has been thought that Saturninus was impressed
by the success of the Mamilian commission, set up in 109 to prosecute
senators who had criminally furthered the anti-Roman activities of
Jugurtha, which secured the conviction of at least five senators;!3”? when
the tribune C. Memmius had tried to do something similar through the
comitia in 111, he had been baulked by a colleague’s veto.!38 But
Saturninus cannot have been merely after the blood of incompetent
generals like Q. Caepio, partly responsible for the disaster at Arausio in
105, as the precedent of the guaestio Mamilia would suggest. The two
certain and the other probable trials under his statute are concerned with
seditious activities involving a tribune or quaestor!39 and it therefore
seems likely that dealing with sedition was at least part of the purpose
that Saturninus had in mind, though the fact that his gaaestio was
subsequently used against his fellow populares suggests that there was
something ambiguous about its terms of reference. It has been acutely
suggested that this ambiguity lay in the concept of the populus Romanus;
Saturninus intended the statute to protect popular leaders like himself
who as populares embodied the populus, but to his optimate opponents the
populus was the whole community directed by the Senate.'#0 Hence the

14 Cic. ap. Asc. 135 Cic. Brut. 304.

13% Bauman 1967 (F 16) 31 notes these cases antedating the Lex Appuleia where the sources
mention a person being charged in an assembly-court with maiestas: Claudia in 246, Flamininus’
father in 232 and Flamininus in 193.

137 Sall. Iug. 40; Cic. Brut, 128.

138 Sall. Ing. 30-4.

139 See Bauman 1967 (F 16) 45-8: persons tried were Norbanus (tribune), the younger Caepio
(quaestor), and possibly Titius and Appuleius Decianus, supporters of Saturninus (tribune).

1 See Ferrary 1983 (C 50) 568-71.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

520 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

ease with which his statute was exploited for ends which would have
appalled him. The imprecision of imminuta maiestas was notorious.!4!

We know a little more about Sulla’s /ex maiestatis; like the other Leges
Corneliae, it was almost certainly a general law, consolidating elements
from earlier legislation!*2 and adding (or perhaps only rendering more
precise) regulations governing the conduct of a provincial governor, in
particular the prohibition against waging war or taking an army out of
his province without instructions from the Senate and people, provi-
sions which were also contained in the Lex Iulia de repetundis.!3 It was
as imprecise as Saturninus’ statute on the exact meaning to be attached to
diminishing the majesty of the Roman people,'** and as, presumably,
was the Lex Iulia maiestatis of Caesar,'45 since the ambiguities were duly
exploited under the Principate. That law may have done no more than
formally abolish the death penalty by substituting interdiction.

To sum up, it is clear that mazestas legislation had two main aims, to
protect Republican institutions from subversion, since respect for mos
could no longer be relied upon to do this, and to deter over-mighty
governors and commanders in the field from ‘unconstitutional’ activi-
ties. In these aims it was unsuccessful.

We turn now to a group of quaestiones dealing with crimes not
exclusively or mainly associated with the senatorial order. Sulla brought
together under a single statute, the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis,
two courts that had in the past been separate, one dealing with veneficia
(poisonings) and the other with sicarii (assassins, gangsters). Murder was
a popular pastime. However, at least when business was brisk and
several courts had to sit simultaneously to deal with cases involving
violent death, the old distinctions between the courts seem to have been
retained, even after amalgamation. '*

The genesis and history of the poisoning court, the guaestio de veneficiis,
present the fewer problems. The earliest specific reference is inscriptio-
nal!47 and refers to C. Claudius Pulcher, consul in 92, who had been
president of the poisoning court about 98. On the other hand, a series of

141 The whole discussion at the trial of Norbanus as reported by M. Antonius, defence counsel, in
Cicero’s De Oratore (11.107—9), would have been absurd if the statute had defined ‘mminuta maiestas.

142 Bauman is almost certainly wrong in his view that it possessed no tralatician elements (1967 (c
$0) 68-90). If he were correct, it would be unlike any other of Sulla’s consolidating statutes for
which we have evidence.

143 Cic. Pis. 50.

144 Asconius in his account of Cornelius’ trial and in his commentary on Cicero’s (lost) speech
illustrates the persisting ambiguity of the concept.

145 See Cic. Phil. 1.21-3 and Bauman 1967 (c 50) 157-8.

1% See Cic. Clu. 147 and 148 for the year 66. In view of the frequency of references to slaughter
and perduellio|maiestas, often in combination, in the Axctor ad Herennium, an almost certainly pre-
Sullan speakers’ handbook, it would be reasonable to suppose that murder, with treason, provided

the Roman barrister with most of his bread and butter even before Sulla’s guaestio legislation.
147 CIL v1.1283.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 521

special guaestiones from 184 to 152, all concerned with poisoning,
illustrate the Roman obsession with poisoning, especially when carried
out on a large scale and/or involving the disposal of aristocratic
husbands. 148 It is however a fictional case, filling out the record for 331
B.c., that is, as so often, more illuminating than fact.'49 The story
involves illustrious victims and a plethora of murderous matrons — 190
either sentenced or carried off by their own lethal potions; it also
involves a plague and an expiatory nail hammered into the temple of
Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The public dimension of the offence is
emphasized by the hammered nail: the poisoning of leading citizens
(primores civitatis) by their spouses is apt to provoke the wrath of the
gods. The case of 152 implicated a mere pair of upper-class husband-
slaughterers!59 and it is easy to see why it should have occurred to
someone that it would be simpler to have a permanent quaestio de venefictis
on hand than to be regularly troubled with the procedural nuisance of
setting up a special court. Any date between 149 and 98 is possible for the
permanent court’s establishment, but the arguments for dating it to
before 120 are the same as those for the dating of the first guaestio ambitus.

The date and purpose of the first permanent quaestio de sicariis are more
controversial. We can trace it back to the early 80s or perhaps a little
earlier.!5! However, Cicero refers to a praetor, L. Tubulus, presiding
over a quaestio de sicariis in 142; he was accused of taking bribes and went
into exile rather than face trial before a special commission.!52 There is no
decisive criterion for determining whether Cicero was referring to a
permanent or special court. In favour of the former alternative is the fact
that elsewhere Cicero always uses of the permanent court the phrase
“quaestio inter sicarios’ which he uses of Tubulus’ court; in favour of the
latter is the fact that never elsewhere does Cicero use of a judge in a
permanent court the expression taking bribes ‘ob rem iudicandam’,
(approximately equivalent to ‘to give a corrupt verdict’), since in the
quaestio perpetua it is the jury, not the judge, that determines the verdict.
Scholars are divided;!53 the most that can be said is that Cicero states
specifically that Tubulus faced trial by a special commission, and thus
possibly implies that Tubulus’ own court was the regular one.

A similar problem arises over L. Cassius Longinus’ presidency of a
quaestio de sicariis. Asconius tells us that he was more than once quaesitor
(judge) in a court concerned with the death of a man, while the Auctor ad

148 Livy xxx1x.38.3 (184); éd. xL.37 and 43.2 (180); fd. x-.44.6; Livy Per. xivitt (152).

9 Livy viir.18. 150 Livy Per. xivini; Val. Max. v1.3.8.

151 Cic. Inv. Rhet. 11.59~Go, even if the case described is fictional, proves the existence of a quaestio
de sicariis at the time when the book was written (early 80s). Cic. Rose. Amer. 64 shows that the court
was Operating some years before 80. 152 Cic. Fin. 11.54.

153 E.g. A. H. M. Jones 1972 (F 89) 54 regards it as a special court, Kunkel 1962 (F 92) 45 asa
quaestio per petua.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

22 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

Herennium uses language which makes it probable that he was president
of some quaestio perpetua, though he does not specify which.!54 If Cassius
ever presided over a quaestio de sicariis, that must have occurred before
130, the date of his praetorship, since unlike special commissions, the
regular criminal courts never had presidents of higher rank than praetor,
and the quaestio de sicariis, at least subsequently, regularly had presidents
of lower rank.

It is important not to translate quaestio de sicariis as ‘murder-court’, for
all that such is the normal rendering: in Republican Latin sicarius does
not mean murderer but a professional killer, a man armed with a sica or
dagger. There is evidence that carrying an offensive weapon (te/um) was
the first crime mentioned in Sulla’s Law.155 We know of a (pre-Sullan)
case where a member of an armed group who had cut off the arm of a
Roman knight in an affray thought that he might be prosecuted snter
sicarios.156 Also, Sulla’s law — and presumably its predecessor — seems to
have applied only to offences committed within one Roman mile of the
city of Rome, an odd restriction if the statute was primarily concerned
with murder.!57 Undeniably, murder was mentioned in the first chapter
and at a later date, perhaps by the end of our period,!58 the /ex de sicariis
came to be regarded purely asa murder law, but in view of the evidence it
seems likely that it began life as a statute primarily concerned with armed
groups operating in Rome, a first attempt to deal with a problem
subsequently handled in greater detail by the Lex Plautia de vi and the
Lex Licinia de sodalictis. Sicarii are mentioned on several occasions in
Cicero’s speech on behalf of Roscius of Ameria in connexion with the
murder of Roscius’ father and the misappropriation of his estates.159 This
suggests that they were not politicized in the same way as the co/legia or
the sodalitates which prompted repressive senatorial decrees and Crassus’
statute of 55. Again, there is a difference between Clodius’ gangs
organized for political purposes and the hatchet-men, allegedly
employed by Catiline,!6° who might earn their living by working as
gladiators or by simple thuggery when not engaged in intimidating

14 Asc. 45C; Auct. ad Her. 1v.41.

155 At all events, it comes first in what purports to be the text of the first chapter (Co//atio 1.3.1).

156 Cic. Inv. Rhet. 11.59-60.

‘57 Collatio 1.3.1, which specifies the one mile limit. Another (missing) chapter dealing with
murders outside Rome is a possibility; however, it is hard to think of any reason for the distinction
nor is there any unequivocal evidence of a citizen being prosecuted inter sicarios for crimes
committed wholly outside Rome.

158 This was certainly the case by the middle of the first century a.p. (see Sen. Ben. v.14.2 and 6.2,
where the use of bomicidium as a substitute for a phrase involving sicarii makes the change certain).
But Cicero ina letter written in 44 (Fam. x11. 3.1) uses sicarii more or less as a synonym of bomicidae.

159 Section 93 provides the most detailed information about the sicarii. but see also 80, 103, 151
and 152.

160 For senatus consulta aimed at collegia see Asconius 7 (in 64) and 75c (subsequently); for Catiline’s
hatchet-men see Cic. Cat. 11.7 and 22, Mur. 49.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE $23

electors or political opponents. In other words, the quaestio presided over
by Tubulus in 142 need not have been concerned with intimidation for
political purposes but with persons who made their living by violent
crime. That still does not settle the question whether Tubulus’ gaaestio in
142 was regular or special but Cicero in the Brutus implies that there was
more than one quaestio perpetua operating at least by the 130s!6! and a
quaestio de sicariis is the only court apart from the quaestio de repetundis
about which we hear in that period.

We know more about the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis than
about any other Republican criminal statute. We possess two excerpts
from it (Cicero, pro Cluentio 151 and 154); two speeches (the pro Roscio
merino and the pro Cluentio) delivered by Cicero as defence counsel in
the court set up by it, and because it forms the basis for jurisprudence on
the subject under the Empire, there is a tolerable amount of material in
the Digest and other law-books.'62 We know that it punished being
armed with a view to committing murder or theft, murder itself, arson
and procuring the conviction of an innocent party on a capital charge
(this last provision being taken over from a Gracchan statute usually
referred to as the ‘lex ne quis iudicio circumveniretur’ or ‘circumvenia-
tur’).!63 In the sections devoted to poisoning the law punished not only
the administrator of the drug but anyone involved, e.g. the manufacturer
or the agent’s principal.

Two facts lead one to suspect that this court could deal with a
somewhat inferior class of defendant than the senators and knights of
whom we hear. Firstly, we know that in 66 it took three courts to handle
all the cases falling within the scope of this law! and it is perhaps
unlikely that there were enough homicidally inclined members of the
senatorial and equestrian orders to keep three courts in business.
Secondly, A. H. M. Jones noted that, unlike all the other courts we know
of except the quaestio de vi, the quaestio de stcariis was normally presided
over by an ex-aedile and not a praetor; he reasonably inferred that it must
have been a court of lower status.!65 This lower status does not lie in its
penalty which was more severe than that for some other courts presided
over by praetors, e.g. the ambitus court for most of its history, nor in its
overall prestige, since Cicero during his praetorship when himself
president of the repetundae court'® did not disdain to take on the case of
Cluentius. It must therefore presumably have lain in the quality of the
defendants.

161 Brut. 106.

162 Particularly valuable is Collatio 1.3.1 which purports to provide the actual words of the first
chapter; linguistic evidence suggests some updating, but upholds in general the validity of the claim.
D. 48.8.1 and 3 also contains valuable authentic material; even Paulus Sent. v.23 may contain some

materia! that goes back to 81 B.C..
163 Cic. Clu. 151. 16 Cic. Civ. 147. 16 A.H.M. Jones 1972 (F 89) 38-9. 16 Cic. Clu. 147.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

524 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

Jones’ argument would also apply to the qguaestio de vi. Cicero at the end
of his speech for Caelius!®? mentions a vis (violence) court set up by a Lex
Lutatia, presumably in 78, to deal with sedition. For the rest, all our
other, quite numerous, Republican references are to a Lex Plautia or
Plotia. The earliest noted example of a prosecution under this law is
datable to 63.168 It must have been passed at some point between 81 and
63; the fact that it duplicates or expands the Lex Cornelia de sicariis of 81
makes this certain. The favoured date nowadays is 70.16 Its relationship
with the mysterious Lex Lutatia is impossible to determine. Q. Lutatius
Catulus’ statute was no doubt introduced to counter the threat of civil
strife posed by the activities of the other consul, M. Aemilius Lepidus,
but whether his law set up a special commission which lapsed after the
collapse of the insurrection, or a permanent court concerned only with
seditio, the range of which was subsequently extended by the Lex Plautia,
is anyone’s guess.

Thanks to Cicero and his ancient commentators, we know a fair
amount about the objects of the Lex Plautia. Its targets included those
who prevented the Senate from meeting or transacting its business free:
from intimidation, or who threatened or assaulted magistrates and
judges, or who disrupted the courts, or who seized with armed men
tactically significant points, or who burnt or wrecked public buildings,
or who carried offensive weapons in public, or who purchased or trained
gladiators, slaves or others with intent to commit arson or murder or to
engage in insurrectionary activities. The law may also have embraced
those who stockpiled weapons for mischievous purposes.!7° Chapters 9
and 10 of this volume sufficiently explain the need for such a law; they
also document its lack of success.

Pompey’s special court de vi has already been mentioned. Caesar’s /ex
de vill may have done no more than substitute mandatory interdiction
for the dead-letter capital penalty.!72

Two further points about v/s need brief mention. In the post-Sullan
period it is not just the criminal law that takes an interest in vis; there is
also a considerable amount of activity in the sphere of civil law.173 The
focus is rural rather than urban and its purpose is to protect lawful

167 Cic. Cael. 70. 168 The attempted prosecution of Catiline (Sall. Cat. 31.4).

169 A Lex Plautia de reditu Lepidanorum and a Lex Plautia agraria are probably to be dated to 70.
Though a case can be made for a slightly later date, one is reluctant to postulate yet another
unknown Plautius holding a magistracy at a different date. __

170 The principal texts are: Cic. Cael. 1, Dom. 54, Mil. 73, Sest. 75, 76, 84, 95, Sull. 15, 54, Vat. 34;
Sall. Cat. 27.2; [Sall.] Cre. 3; Ase. 49c.

171 Cic. Phil. 1.23.

172 The Julian laws discussed in D. 48.6 and 7 are Augustan: they (or it) included a section on the
right to provocatio, but for authorities as late as Livy in Book x (9.4) the standard statute on provocatio
was the Lex Porcia. Ergo the Digest statute is Augustan, not Caesarian.

173, See Frier 1983 (F 204) and 1985 (F 205) 51-6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE 525

possessors from attacks of one kind of another. This praetorian activity
must have been stimulated by the rural unrest consequent upon the
settlement of Sulla’s veterans on Italian farms. Secondly, the political
violence of the sos is emblematic of the collapse of social controls at
Rome. Roman society had always required its members to use an
appropriate degree of force in the form of self-help. A role for the people
in protecting the innocent and seizing, even punishing, the guilty is part
of the exemplary mythology of Roman history.!74 ‘Vim vi repellere’ — ‘to
repel force with force’ — was regarded as a maxim of conduct self-
evidently true.!75 Consequently, if the discipline of os maiorum was to
break down anywhere, the delicately balanced attitude to vis was likely to
be the point where tensions appeared, and this is precisely what
happened.

Sulla introduced a new court to deal with the forging of coin and wills.
It is easier to provide a context for the criminalizing of false coining; the
edict of Marius Gratidianus (86 or 85) and its popularity demonstrate
widespread concern at the debasing of the currency.!76 One assumes that
it was aimed primarily at dishonest moneyers. Perhaps there was some
cause célébre which will account for Sulla rendering criminal the forgery of
wills, codicils and signatures. The penalty under his /ex testamentaria
nummaria was interdiction.

Particularly puzzling is the Lex Cornelia de iniuriis. Iniuria is the
generic title of a number of delicts, chiefly assault and battery, that can be
the subject of a civil action. We know that Sulla’s statute was concerned
with aggravated assault and housebreaking; it may also have dealt with
defamation.!77 We can be reasonably sure that it prescribed trial by a
quaestio.78 Yet there is no reference to any quaestio de iniuriis in the
relatively abundant Republican literature and by the time of our legal
sources, the second and third centuries a.p., the guaestio, if it had ever
existed, did so no longer. There are two possibilities, not necessarily
exclusive: iniuria did not merit a separate quaestio but shared one of the
others, perhaps the guaestio de sicariis,.7° or breaking and entering was a

174 Livy 11.55 and 111.56 provide paradigm cases. For a full discussion see Lintott 1968 (A 62) 6-21
and 1972 (F 102) 228-31.

5 C. Cassius Longinus, a jurist of the first century 4.D., actually regarded this maxim as a law of
nature, see D. 42.16.1.27.

1% For the edict of Marius Gratidianus, see Cic. Of. 111.80; Pliny HN xxx1it.132, XxXXxIV.27;
Seager in ch. 6 above, pp. 180-1.

17 Whether Sulla’s statute included it is a moot point: D. 47.10.5.9 (Ulp.) includes defamation in
a passage commenting on the Lex Cornelia. On the other hand, D. 47.10.5 pr. (Ulp.) suggests that
even after juristic interpretation the law applied only to physical iniuria.

% Ulpian (D. 47.10. pr.) lists plaintiff's kin none of whom can serve as a index in an action ex /ege
Cornelia. This kind of list can be paralleled for quaestio juries but not for the single index or very small
number of recuperatores assigned by the praetor to any particular action for iniuria,

19 The overlap of field makes it a strong contender (see Cic. Inv. Rhet. 11.59-6o). It might also
help to explain why there were three courts operating at once in 66.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

526 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

proletarian crime and thus ignored by literature which is wholly upper-
class.180 As for the few references to defamation in the Republic, they
suggest that when one senator defamed another, the matter was dealt
with by a kind of verbal duel known as sponsione provocare, a form of
challenge or wager. Another possible indication of the vulgar character
of iniuria is the fact that only the injured party or his agent could
prosecute under the law.!8! Of course, this rule may not be original; it
could have been introduced once the guaestio prosecution for iniuria had
become obsolete, simply in order to bring the procedure into line with
that of normal civil actions; but if the rule ¢s original, then it demon-
strates that Sulla thought of his quaestio de iniuriis as being in some
respects more like a civil law tribunal than his other quaestiones where the
defendants were normally persons of consequence. Modern manuals on
Roman law state that the penalty was a heavy fine, but there is nothing
about the penalty in the legal sources; it may even have been capital.!82

We know of one more permanent court, a guaestio set up by a Lex Papia
of 65 to handle cases of disputed citizenship; the similar court established
in 95 by the Lex Licinia Mucia was surely extra ordinem. A Lex Fabia de
plagiariis, passed before 63 but probably post-Sullan, seems to have
made some kinds of kidnapping a capital offence. Pompey, perhaps in 5 5,
promoted a /ex de parricidiis which made some alteration in the law
relating to kin-murder.!83

Judiciary statutes

Sulla is thought to have raised the number of praetors to eight, with a
view, it is said, to give each of his guaestiones a practorian president. If this
really was his aim, it was soon frustrated, partly by the creation of new
courts after his death and partly by the need to keep several courts de
sicariis et veneficiis going simultaneously; for these courts, and at least
sometimes the court de vi, have aedilician guaestio presidents. He also
transferred the courts from the equestrian to the senatorial order, having
first enlarged the Senate by adding 300 knights.!® We have already noted

189 Assault, on the other hand was, at least under the Empire, a gentlemanly sport; cf. Nero’s
nocturnal activities (Tac. Aan. xut.25; Suet. Ner. 26.1) and Juvenal’s upper-class bully-boy (Sat.
111. 278-300).

181 For sponsione provocare, see Crook 1976 (F 199); for the right to prosecute, see Paul ap. D.
3.3.42.1 and Ulpian ap. D. 47.10.5.6-8.

18 The overlap of fields between the /ex de sicariis and inivria was noted in n. 159. It would be
paradoxical if X could suffer loss of caput for ordinary iniuria, whereas Y, found guilty of iniuria atrox
exc lege Cornelia, was merely liable toa fine.

183 Lex Papia: Cic. Balb. 52, Aft. 1v.18.4, Arch. 10, Of. 111.47; Val. Max. 11.4.5; Dio xxxvit.g.5.
Lex Licinia: Cic. Ba/b. 48. and, for both laws, Badian 1973 (c 164); Lex Fabia: Cic. Rab. Perd. 8
(speech delivered in 63). Lex de parritidtis: D. 48.9.1 and g Pr.-1.

18 App. BCiv. 1.100; also Vell. Pat. 1.32, Tac, Aan. xt.22, Cic. Verr. 1.37.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE §27

that there were complaints about the venality of these senatorial juries: it
is also the case that the jurors themselves found their task irksome,!®5
doubtless because the smaliness of the panels meant a good deal of jury
service for each individual member. In 70 L. Aurelius Cotta introduced
mixed juries as Drusus seems to have contemplated doing in 91; as we
have seen, the Lex Aurelia parcelled out membership of the panels
equally between senators, knights and the ¢fribani aerarii.'®6 Cotta’s
judiciary law was nota radical measure but a compromise, and although
Caesar, Antony and Augustus all tinkered about with jury membership,
the principle of drawing juries from more than one order survived into
the Empire.!87

Vis and murder committed in Italy

There is one glaring lacuna in our knowledge of the punishment of
murder and vis, namely the regular method of dealing with these crimes
when committed in Italy outside the suburbs of Rome. In the provinces
the governor’s court dealt with such crimes; on occasions, as has been
shown, particularly in the second century, special commissions dealt
with such crimes in Italy. Defendants like Oppianicus in 74 and Caelius
in 56, some of whose crimes had been committed within Rome, were
prosecuted in the appropriate quaestio perpetua at Rome. But there must
have been a large residue of municipal murders whose perpetrators
confined their activities to Italy and were not so notorious as to rate a
special court. How were they prosecuted? No solution is free from
difficulty. One would expect them to have been tried at Rome, since
there were limitations even on the civil jurisdiction of municipal
magistrates.'88 And whose jurisdiction would have applied to a prima-
facie murderer some of whose crimes were committed in Aquinum and
others in Arpinum? But against this solution there is not only the plain
statement of Co/l/atio 1.3.1, limiting the jurisdiction of the quaestio de
Sicariis to within one Roman mile of Rome, but the lack of certain cases of
a wholly municipal murderer being tried by the quaestio de sicariis and, on
the contrary, a tendency to include an implausible charge involving an
offence at Rome together with much more plausible charges involving
crimes outside the city. A second court dealing with murders

185 Cic. 1 Verr. 1.22; Cael. 1.

18 See above, p. 509.

187 Lex Aurelia: Asc. Pis. 17¢; Schol. Bob. 94 Stang); but by implication Cic. Aft. 1.16.3. Caesar
abolished the panel of tribuni aerarii (Suet. Iu/. 41.2); Antony reintroduced a third panel; they were
referred to in most offensive terms by Cicero (Pdi/. 1.20), but were probably the tribuni aerarii.

18 The text of the Lex Rubria (Bruns no. 16, c. 21) shows magistrates in Cisalpine Gaul obliged to
remit to Rome claims for the return of money lent to the value of 15,000 sesterces or more. Nor had
they the right of missio in possessionem.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

528 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

committed outside Rome, though unattested in the sources, remains a
possibility. But perhaps, after all, capital crimes committed locally by
Roman citizens were dealt with in the municipia, as, on one interpre-
tation, the Lex Osca Tabulae Bantinae would suggest.!89 Possibly the
private criminal action referred to earlier was still available to the
kinsfolk of Roman citizens in Italy. Unless some newly discovered
municipal charter reveals the truth, any solution to this problem can be
little better than guesswork.

An appraisal of the quaestiones perpetuae

It is clear from this account of the gaaestiones perpetuae that they had two
principal functions, the repression of crime, particularly when involving
public disorder and committed or organized by persons of standing, and
the policing of the activities of magistrates and senators. They did not
perform those functions well, but there was some excuse. Rome had
managed with a minimum of legal institutions until the second century
because custom imposed self-discipline or at any rate a respect for
magistrates when discipline broke down. In 186 the consuls acting partly
through the aediles and the II Iviri capitales were able to round up large
numbers of men and women allegedly implicated in the Bacchanalian
conspiracy and to execute many of them (Livy xxxrx.14.17-18). The
special commission which they headed was not authorized by the people
and they had at their disposal a very small number of subordinates to
carry Out inquiries and effect arrests. Yet their case was accepted after
being presented at a public meeting (contio); information and, surely,
active assistance were forthcoming; the Bacchanalian cult was duly
suppressed at Rome and its vicinity. Contrast what happened in 67 when
the consul C. Calpurnius Piso endeavoured to support by his authority
the acceptance by one tribune of his colleague’s veto: he was stoned and
his fasces smashed.!9° Small wonder then that the Romans were not at
first particularly successful in coping with such a drastic change in
attitudes towards legitimate authority.

If one regards criminal courts as machinery for punishing those guilty
of specific crimes, then it is easy enough to see where the weaknesses of
the quaestiones perpetuae lay. First, a system which relies on a member of
the public coming forward to prosecute an offender is likely to prove
somewhat erratic. This is particularly true of a system which offers the
prosecutor only minimal assistance in preparing his case. He will require
a strong incentive: personal involvement, possibilities for self-promo-

189 Bruns nos. 8, 8-9 and 14. 199 Asc. 58c.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

QUAESTIONES PERPETUAE §29

tion or the prospect of some financial advantage.'! In such a situation
one can well imagine the discreet or popular criminal evading prosecu-
tion altogether.

Secondly, once a defendant was charged, the scales were weighted in
his favour. Miscarriages of justice resulting in the conviction of probably
innocent men like Rutilius in 92 were rare. Much more often the guilty
were acquitted. A striking example occurred in 52. Milo was condemned
by Pompey’s special court de vi for his role in the affray at Bovillae, but
the same court acquitted his gang-leader M. Saufeius who had been
personally responsible for the death of Clodius.!° Cicero himself
boasted of having pulled the wool over the eyes of the jury in his defence
of Cluentius.'93 This was sometimes due to bribery, but bribes could be
paid to convict as well as acquit a defendant, as the case of Cluentius
shows. More significant was the effect of upper-class Roman codes of
behaviour on the quality of advocacy. A Roman was expected to pursue
his private and public enmities regardless of his oratorical skills, but a
defendant will naturally invite the most eloquent or influential of his
friends to support him in court. Thus in 56 P. Sestius was prosecuted de vi
by aman of straw, M. Tullius Albinovanus, whereas the ex-tribune had
for counsel Hortensius and Cicero, the leading advocates of the day, and
M. Crassus. Later in the year, M. Caelius was prosecuted de vi by a
stripling of seventeen pursuing a family vendetta and seconded by two
nonentities while Caelius, himself no mean orator, called in Crassus and
Cicero to support him.

Thirdly, there were no rules of evidence. We have seen that this state
of affairs could be used in the cause of equity, to ensure that villainies
were brought into the open, but in the hands of a skilled orator it could
be used to arouse irrelevant prejudice. For example, in the pro Cluentio
Cicero dwelt on the unnatural hatred of her son displayed by Sassia, the
woman behind the prosecution of A. Cluentius, and her allegedly
murderous past.'%4 Even if the story was true, it has little bearing on the
charges against Cluentius. Thus the advantage accruing to whoever had
the greater rhetorical talent, plaintiff or defence, was compounded.

Finally, as we have already noted, the system of separate courts was
clumsy and inconvenient, as was the system of fixed penalties (apart from
the element of /itis aestimatio in repetundae and peculatus trials). There must
have been a temptation to acquit when there were mitigating circum-

191 The last of these incentives to be discreetly pursued, since the Lex Cincia of 204 forbade the
payment of fees to barristers; however, the statute was flouted (Tac. Aan. x1.7) and there was always
payment by legacy. See also Alexander 1985 (F 3).

192 Asc. 54-§C. 193 Quint. Inst. 1.17.21.

194 Unnatural hatred of son: C/x. 17-18, 192~5; murderous past: C/w. 11-17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

530 13. THE CONSTITUTION AND CRIMINAL LAW

stances and the alternative, conviction, would result in exile; a third
alternative, a verdict of Non Liquet, offered a way round the problem,
but such verdicts seem always to have been discouraged and were
probably abolished by the Lex Aurelia in 70,195

That these weaknesses were eventually at least partly perceived by
intelligent Romans is demonstrated not only by the gradual supersession
of the guaestiones, under the Principate, by the jurisdiction of the praefectus
urbi, but also by the growth of other forms of criminal jurisdiction, at
least one involving at times a magistrate playing an active role in the
investigation.!9%° Thus the main defects of the guaestiones were at least
partly remedied. Their most enduring legacy, however, was the legisla-
tion that constituted them: these statutes, mainly the work of Sulla,
Caesar and Augustus, formed the basis for jurisprudential treatment of
the crimes they handled, and continued to be influential wherever
Roman Law was influential.

195 Cicero (Ciw. 76) speaking in 66 of the trial of Oppianicus in 74 says that some of the jurors ‘ex
vetere illa disciplina iudiciorum’ voted Non Liquet at the earlier trial. This is the last we hear of N.L.
and it is therefore likely that it was abolished by the Lex Aurelia in 70. However even the Gracchan
lex repetundarum discouraged it (Bruns no. 10, line 48).

1% The Princeps himself heard cases, so did the Senate.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 14

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN
PRIVATE LAW

J. A. CROOK

Law has several facets, none of which a historical account ought to
ignore. It may be seen as a set of rules of behaviour backed by sanctions,
an instrument of social engineering, a mechanism for dispute-settlement,
or a mode of argument and a way of thinking. It may at a given time be
consonant, or be dissonant, with the desires and habits of its society; and
it cannot alone give a picture of all the boundaries of behaviour in a
society, because there are always social and economic constraints at least
as powerful as the law, and in relation to those alone can it be properly
understood.

This chapter is about the private law.! Conceptual puzzles can be
raised about the boundary between that and other categories of law, but
for present purposes the plain man’s concept of the modern difference
between private (what English lawyers call ‘civil’) and criminal law
suffices.2 The courts that people came into for private litigation were
different from those described in the previous chapter, and that can serve
as a pragmatic criterion; but there were overlaps and borderline cases.
The end-point is, loosely, the death of Cicero; as for the starting-point,
discussion will be limited to developments subsequent to the Twelve
Tables, and in fact little positive will be said about anything before the
end of the Hannibalic War.3

Apart from extrapolation backwards from the ‘classical’ law of the
Principate, a procedure which remains essential in spite of its obvious
dangers,‘ the evidence for private law in the Republic is mostly not that

' For Latin terms not sufficiently defined in their context see Berger 1953 (F 23). ‘Jolowicz’ refers
throughout to Jolowicz and Nicholas 1972 (F 85).

2 See e.g. Cloud in ch. 13 above, pp. 503-4. One major difference may just be noted: theft stood
on the private and not the criminal side of the boundary.

3 The end-point excludes, arbitrarily, the jurists Trebatius Testa and M. Antistius Labeo, most of
whose activity belongs to the triumviral and Augustan period. For developments after the Twelve
Tables see, generally, Jolowicz 191-304. The starting-point excludes the ‘pontifical period’ of
jurisprudence: see Schulz 195 3 (F 268) 5—32; J. G. Wolf 1985 (F 318) and, most recently, Wieacker
1988 (F 171) 310-40.

‘ For the effort to separate the ‘pre-classical’ from the ‘classical’ see especially the works of
Watson (F 294; F 295; F 297; F 299; F 300) passim.

531

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

532 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

of technical writings: relatively few things said or written by the
Republican jurists survive. One later work requires special mention:> a
long fragment, preserved in Justinian’s Digest, of the ‘One-Volume
Handbook’ (/iber singularis enchiridit) of the jurist Pomponius, written in
the middle of the second century a.p.° The passage has three sections, of
which the first two are about the growth of what we should call the
‘sources of the law’ and the jurisdictional magistracies, for which we
mostly possess much better evidence. The third, however, is a historical
list of the great lawyers, and constitutes unique testimony. A few
Republican inscriptions are of some importance;’ otherwise, one must
turn to general literature. Plautus and Terence provide dating evidence
for some legal institutions;’ in Cato’s and Varro’s agricultural writings
there are references to standard contracts;? Valerius Maximus and the
antiquarians Aulus Gellius and Festus contribute definitions and anec-
dotes; but overwhelmingly the principal source is Cicero, virtually every
genre of whose works supplies a contribution. !°

An important division is between what may be called ‘substantive
law’, i.e. the rules laying down people’s rights and duties, and ‘adjectival
law’ (the law of procedure or actions), i.e. how people may go to law so
that their rights and duties issue in practical effects. The latter is quite as
important as the former, and it is characteristic of Roman Republican
law that the substantive law developed mainly through advances in
procedure.

The substantive law of Rome did not consist only of statutes (/eges and
plebiscita). The sources of law, i.e. what counted as creating legal norms,
included also senatus consulta'' and the edicts of the praetors and curule
aediles, while some of the most basic rules, e.g. the family law of patria
potestas and all that went with it, did not rest on any specific enactment
but were simply part of i#s, the immemorial ‘structure of Roman legal
life’.12 The Romans did not have a legal code: the Twelve Tables, though
much revered, were probably not conceived of asa full code even in their
day, and neither they nor anything else were ever regarded as entrenched

5 Besides, of course, the Institutes of Gaius, which offer historical information about the /egis
actiones and sundry statutes.

6 D. 1.2.2. See Bretone 1971 (F 190) 111-35; NGrr 1976 (F 250) esp. 512ff, Schiller 1978 (F 264)
wy See the List of select sources, p. 560. The Tabula Irnitana is of later date, but permits some
reasonable deductions about the late Republic.

8 Difficult to assess because they may be stating Greek law. For criteria see Watson 1965 (F 294)
46-7; di Salvo 1979 (F 261) 24-8.

9 See the List of select sources, p. 560.

10 See the List of select sources, p. 560.

1 ‘Resolutions of the Senate’, usually held to have been in principle only advice to magistrates,
but see CrifO 1968 (F 40); contra, Watson 1974 (F 304) ch. 2.

12, So Horak 1969 (F 214) 117; we can thus evade the term ‘custom’ and its disputed role, on which
see NGrr 1972 (F 249); Schiller 1978 (F 264) 253f. On tus see Kaser 1973 (F 221) 527.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 533

beyond reach of change.'3 However, the number of private law statutes
in the time of the Republic was small (though some were of important
scope),!4 and senatus consulta were not then used for the private law; so the
principal engine of development of the law was the power of the two
praetors, urbanus and peregrinus — and in one special field (the law of sale)
the curule aediles. They had no power to make ius civile, which was
enshrined in the immemorial rules plus the Twelve Tables plus the
procedural system known as the /egis actiones; but the praetors were in
charge of the courts and they had imperium, executive power, and so, by
granting or refusing actions, issuing prohibitions and procedural
requirements, granting people possession of assets and stopping others
from challenging it, or restoring the legal status quo if someone had been
tricked, they gradually created new substantive law by way of the
remedies. In the phrase of Papinian, ius praetorium ox honorarium, the
praetorian law, grew up to ‘assist or supplement or correct’ the civil
law.!5 The stages of the process are much argued,'® but it is a major
development of our period, and certainly by the end of the period the ius
honorarium counted as a distinct and separate corpus of law,!7 fixed
enough to be the object of written commentaries as hitherto only the us
civile had been.

A second, not unrelated, major characteristic of the period is the rapid
development of jurisprudence. The structure of Roman — as opposed,
for example, to Athenian — society was always such as to give necessary
place to learned advisers on the law, iuris prudentes or iuris consulti. In early
times the pontifices played that role; by the middle Republic, though many
iuris prudentes were still pontifices, the role had become secular. It consisted
of agere, cavere and respondere, i.e. respectively, appearing in court for
people, drafting legal documents, and giving legal opinions publicly to
all comers'8 — that is to say, to the praetors, to the people who judged
cases, and to the litigants; and anyone who wished to study the law was
allowed to listen. There was in Rome no Bench of professional judges:
praetors, and the people who judged cases, and advocates were all, in
principle, laymen — neither was jurisprudence itself a profession in the
commonly understood modern sense, but rather a hobby of some career

'3, Pace Ferenczy 1970 (F 50) and Ducos 1984 (F 201) 178-82. See Pugliese 1951 (F 258).
14 Some of the most important are listed in the List of chronological indications, pp. 561-2.
18 Do war.7.0.
6 On ins honorarium see, generally, Jolowicz 97~101; Kaser 1984 (PF 223); von Libtow 1983 (FP
237). Kelly 1966 (F 225), argues for a ‘legislative age’ from 200 B.c. to the Lex Aebutia followed by
an ‘edictal age’; contra, Watson 1974 (F 304) ch. 3. Behrends, reviewing Watson (F 304) in ZSS 92
(1975) 297-308, puts the florwit of the edict from ¢. 100 B.c. onwards, preceded by development via
the bonae fidei indicia. Frier 1983 (F 204) argues that the Lex Cornelia of 67 B.c. gradually brought the
‘edicta!’ period to an end, to be followed by the ‘juristic’ period.

17 “Lex annua’, Cic. u Verr. 1.109.

18 Though for a denial of this tripartition see Cancelli 1971 (F 194).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

534 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

members of the governing class, which, if pursued sufficiently far, gave a
man’s opinion standing when he pronounced what he thought the law
was. Praetors were certainly free to compose their edicts without
jurisprudential aid, as Verres plainly did; on the other hand, the roles of
praetor or éudex and jurisprudent could sometimes happen to coincide in
the same person. One way and another it is likely that it was the
jurisprudents, mainly, who invented the novelties that the praetors put
into effect:!9 Roman law was, like English, ‘jurists’ law’.

The concept of increasing role-differentiation as a society develops
applies well to the growing specialization of Roman legal roles. Towards
the end of the Republic, jurisprudence and higher career-holding began
to part company; equally, cavere ceased to be part of the job of the
jurisprudents and was left to lesser folk. Agere, too, ceased to be part of
their role: that was because court pleading became more specialized
under the influence of Greek rhetoric and was taken over by quite
different people, like Cicero,2° and because advocacy expanded tremen-
dously with the growth of the guaestiones.2! The legal ‘profession’ became
two ‘professions’: it is a mistake to forget that advocacy remained an
essential component of the legal order.

Ilr

There follows an inevitably rough sketch of the main institutions of the
private law as they stood by the end of our period.?? In Part III an
attempt will be made to survey some of the routes by which that state of
the law was reached.

1. The law of persons

The law of persons? may be considered under the headings /ibertas,
civitas and familia, rooted concepts of Roman society.

Libertas All people were free or they were slaves. It is likely that in
earliest Rome slaves were humble servants rather than, as yet, chattels,
and that it was the Roman conquests, with their massive imports, that
depressed the status of slaves and turned them into chattels; but,

19 See Cic. Of. 111.65 ‘a iurisconsultis etiam reticentiae poena est constituta’; De Or. 1. 200 ‘domus
iuris consulti totius oraculum civitatis’; and generally, Frier 1985 (F 205).

20 For the causa Curiana, where one advocate, Q. Scaevola, was ‘iuris peritorum eloquentissimus’
and the other, L. Crassus, ‘eloquentium iuris peritissimus’, see n. 128 below. Cicero at Top. 51
records the jurist Aquilius Gallus as saying, of a question of fact, ‘nihil hoc ad ius: ad Ciceronem’.

21 Cic. Brus. 106.

22 The rules will be discussed in the ‘institutional’ order as found in Gaius’ Institutes, though
neither that nor any other overall system had yet become canonical in the Republican period. See
Stein 1983 (F 275). 23 See, generally, Watson 1967 (F 295).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 535

anyhow, by the late Republic, the slave was a paradoxical legal mixture —
a res, thing, chattel, piece of property, under dominium, but also a person,
under potestas. Slaves were bought and sold, mortgaged, put to labour
however dangerous or degrading, or to torture or death, and had no
rights or (except in relation to their dominus) duties. Yet, already, to kill
someone else’s slave was not only ‘damage to property’ but also
murder;”4 and, because the slave could play many roles in society that
owners wished to avoid, the law had invented mechanisms to utilize him
— or her — in such roles. Slaves could be freed by their domini,?5 either by
lifetime acts (enrolling in the census or freeing vindicta, ‘by the rod’,
before a magistrate) or by will.2° The slave thus freed became a civis
Romanus, though he was /ibertinus, which meant that he might have duties
that were made actionable by the praetor:2” obsequinm (‘dutifulness’) to
the manumitter and his /zberi,28 operae (opera is a day’s labour) if promised
as a quid pro quo for liberty, and an automatic right of the manumitter and
his /iberi to a share of the estate if the freedman died without issue.

Civitas Cives Romani, ‘Roman citizens’, were the ‘in-group’ to whom
alone, unless the Romans themselves chose to bestow it on others,
Roman law applied. Most free people in the Roman orbit were still
peregrini, non-cives Romani,?> though after 49 B.c. all Italians, at least, were
cives Romani. There were still, in Cicero’s time, parts of Roman law from
which peregrini remained excluded. They did not have dominium or
potestas, could not own Roman land or inherit anything from Romans,
nor achieve Roman citizenship by any except a state act: they could not,
for example, be adopted by a Roman citizen. That affected the children of
mixed marriages, which were not éustae nuptiae, fully effective at Roman
law: if either parent was peregrine the children were peregrine.*9 But all
the Roman law of commerce had become open to peregrines in the
Roman courts, and they were subject to the Roman law of delict, or
‘tort’, sometimes by the legal fiction that they were citizens.

Familia ‘Family’ is a ‘weasel-word’: to the Romans, as to us, it could
mean different groups, wider or narrower, according to context. But its

24 D. 48.8.1.2, reporting the Lex Cornelia of 81 B.c.

25 See, generally, Fabre 1981 (G 65). Of course, domini might require payment.

26 If conditions were imposed, e.g. ‘if he shall have submitted correct accounts to my heir’, the
slave was meanwhile called statuliber; there was much Republican discussion about that status, see
Watson 1967 (F 295) ch. 17.

27 Watson 1967 (F 295) 227-36.

28 Luberi were a person’s children, zo¢ his or her heirs if the heirs were from outside.

29 On Latins, conubium and commercium see, generally, Jolowicz 58-62.

3% So ruled by a Lex Minicia, of uncertain date but probably at least before the Social War; contra,
Watson 1967 (F 295) 27 n. 4. Before that, the child of a Roman citizen woman and a peregrine
without conubium would, by general rule, have been a Roman citizen. See Luraschi 1976 (F 238).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

536 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

most striking significance, in Roman law, was the ‘agnatic’ patriline,
characterized especially by patria potestas, the power held by the eldest
male ascendant over all his agnatic descendants as long as he lived. It
included the right to put to death.32 People én potestate, e.g. filii and filiae
familias, could own nothing, and what they acquired accrued automati-
cally to the paterfamilias. He could arrange the marriages of his children
in potestate and dissolve them at will. He could, if he chose, release them
from his potestas by emancipatio: the evidence is insufficient to determine
whether that was normally done when the children grew up and married;
it certainly was not always so, and we hear of emancipatio being used as a
punishment.%3 In any case, the agnatic structure was not predominant in
every sphere. It may have been a residue from a remote age of extended
families, but upper-class Romans in the late Republic lived in nuclear,
not extended, families.34 Agnation dominated pofestas and intestate
succession, but in other aspects of family and social life blood-relation-
ships and even marriage-relationships were equally important.*5 As the
agnatic bond could be dissolved by ewancipatio or by a daughter passing
into manus (which will be explained shortly) upon marriage, so it could
be created by adoption, of which there were two forms, adrogatio of
persons not én potestate>® and adoptio of those who were in potestate. Only
males could adopt: adoption took the adoptee into the potestas of the
adopter or of his paterfamilias.

Even when people became sui iuris, i.e. there was no longer anybody
with potestas over them, they might still have to be subject to sufela,
guardianship — males had to be so till puberty, females all their lives. The
original purpose of ¢ute/a was protection of family property by (and for)
the agnates; but a paterfamilias could exclude the agnates by appointing
someone quite different to be ¢u/or to his children or his wife ¢m manu, and
by the late Republic sute/a was perceived as being at least partly for the
protection of the vulnerable.3” The dissonance between ¢utela mulierum

31 Agnation is descent in the male line: you (male or female) are agnatically related to your father,
his father, your brothers and sisters and his brothers and sisters, but not to your mother or her
relations nor to your wife or hers, nor, if you are a woman, to your children (unless you have been
married with manus). It is a relation of law, not blood, and so can be created by adoption or manus.

32 As to whether only upon the vote of a domesticum consilium, see Jolowicz 119 and, contra, Watson
1975 (F 305) 42-4. In general, see Harris 1986 (F 212) and Y.-P. Thomas 1984 (F 282).

33. There is also reason to believe that a majority of fathers would have died by the time their sons
married: see Saller 1986 (G 220) esp. 15.

* In the one or two exceptional cases poverty is stressed as a reason. See, generally, Crook 1967 (F
196); Saller 1986 (G 220).

35 Thus, in the domesticum consilium to consider offences of a wife both families had a right to
participate, even when there was manus. See also D. 2.8.2.2. and 2.4.4.1-2; lex repetundarum (FIRA 1
no. 7) line 20; D. 47.10.5 pr. A good deal of Dixon 1985 (G 57) is relevant to this point, and so is Saller
1986 (G 220).

36 On some criteria for adrogatio see (allowing for malice) Cic. Dow. 34-8, with Watson 1967 (F
295) 82-8. 37 So Watson 1967 (F 295) ch. 9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 537

and the independence of some women in Cicero’s age is often noted: the
teeth of that ¢ute/a were being filed away fast, except when it was held by
the woman’s agnates — ¢ufores could be changed at the woman’s will, and
so on.

The anomaly of grown-up people in potestate being unable to own or
transact was qualified by the institution of peculinm (available, actually, to
slaves as well as to fii and filiae familias). At the discretion of the
paterfamilias or dominus they could have a fund which counted as separate
to the extent of being dealt with by them as for practical purposes their
own. It could comprise any kind of assets — land, slaves, money. No
paterfamilias or dominus was, however, obliged to allow such a fund, and
it is uncertain how common it was in the case of the f/# and filiae, for all
that we might suppose it to have been the only way in which a married
filtus with his own family could operate a nuclear household or pay fora
political career (though most may have been sai éuris by then).

The Romans were strictly monogamous and held a high ideal of
marriage, but not a sacred one, so marriage could be entered into and
dissolved again without legal difficulty. In earlier Rome marriage was
usually (to begin with perhaps exclusively) accompanied by manus,
whereby the woman left her own agnatic patriline and counted as part of
that of her husband. It was like an adoption, except that, even in the
absence of any formalities, continuous cohabitation automatically
created it. But already the Twelve Tables permitted a wife, by ‘absence of
three nights’ each year, to avoid automatic manus, and in a marriage
where there was not manus the wife remained part of her own descent
group. (The distinction was one of law, not topography: in both cases
equally the husband and wife set up their own neolocal, conjugal
domicile and nuclear family.) In the late Republic marriage with manus
was the less frequent, though it is too bold to claim that we can know by
how much the less.38 As to the often posited relation between what is
miscalled ‘free’ marriage and the alleged emancipation of women in that
age,” it must be remembered that many women, especially in first
marriages, will still have been subject to patria potestas.

A woman sui iuris with property, if she underwent manus, surrendered
it to her new agnatic family (chough in Cicero’s time it counted as dowry,
with the relevant consequences if the marriage ended). If there was no
manus her property remained her own. There was no community of
property between husband and wife, and gifts between spouses were null
and void. In the property-owning class dowry was the social norm.” It

38 Pace Watson 1967 (F 295) 19-23. Manus-marriages continue to appear in the sources with no
hint of being anomalous: Cluentius’ mother, Cic. C/u. 45; Catullus rxvi.119-24; Laudatio‘Turiae’,
FIRA 11 no. 69, lines 13~16.

39 On which see Gratwick 1984 (G 108); Gardner 1986 (F 207) ch. 12.

“ Dowry was, in our period, always a contribution from the bride’s side.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

538 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

was owned by the husband (or his paterfamilias) during the marriage; the
social expectation was that the husband would contribute to maintain his
wife on a scale corresponding to the income of the dowry. As to what
should happen to the dowry if the marriage ended, the parties were free
to make what bargains their relative social positions enabled them to
make, but in the absence of such bargains some rules of law came into
play, whose basic purpose was to ensure to the woman a fund to support
her.

Succession, the devolution of property, may in earliest Roman times
have been purely automatic, but testation was possible already at the
time of the Twelve Tables,*! and long before Cicero the total freedom, so
far as the law went, to dispose by will ofall his family’s assets had become
the greatest power of the paterfamilias. It was the expected thing that a
person should make a will,*? but intestacy remained important because it
came into play not only in the absence of a will but also if a will was for
any reason invalid. Intestate succession went by the old automatic rules,
which were relentlessly agnatic: first, to sai heredes;*3 if none such, to
deceased’s agnates of the nearest degree only; if none such, to the geas.4
That excluded any children who had gone out of posestas, and all
cognates, and your husband or wife; and women, who held no pofestas,
had no sai heredes, and their children were not agnate to them (unless the
mother was in manu), and so could not succeed them on intestacy. Now
the general sentiment came to be that intestacy kept too many people
out, but equally that testation could let too many people in: for example,
a paterfamilias could legitimately disinherit all his children in favour of a
friend or a political boss. So the lifetime of Cicero saw much legal
change, via the ias honorarium. When anyone claimed an inheritance the
praetor granted entry into the assets, bonorum possessio, whereupon
any body who believed he had a better claim would have to bring a suit, a
hereditatis petitio, against the possessor. What praetors began to do was to
grant bonorum possessio on intestacy according to a list of their own: first,
to all the children, whether still 7” potestate or not; if none such, then to all
the grades of agnates after the first; if none such, then to cognates; and
ultimately even to husbands and wives inter se. Such a grant was at first
only provisional, sine re, i.e. the praetor could not refuse to accept the suit
of a challenger under the old civil law rule, if one appeared*5 (though if

41 See Watson 1975 (F 305) ch. 5; Magdelain 1983 (F 240).

42 See Crook 1973 (F 198).

43 Those in the pofestas or manus of the deceased at his death, irrespective of sex, who became sui
iuris by his death.

“4 The large agnatic kin-group of which the family was only one stem. On the continued
existence of gentile succession in Cicero’s day see Watson 1971 (F 300) 180-1.

45 Except that the grant presumably did override the civil claim of the gens, or else it would have
been pointless.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 539

none did you were home and dry). However, there came a moment when
praetors were prepared to give bonorum possessio cum re, i.e. would reject
the suit of a civil law claimant against their preferred possessor: that
important moment does not seem to have come, except in the case of the
estates of freedmen, until the very end of our period.* In cases, also,
where there was a will the praetors began to allow bonorum possessio to
people ‘against the will’; and even in the teeth of an express disherison
they began in the late Republic to accept the quere/a inofficiosi testamenti, a
suit against one or more of the ‘named heirs’ by a relative claiming to
have been unfairly disinherited. That was a great inroad into patria
potestas.

Legacy was, for the Romans, quite distinct from heirship: the estate
accrued to the heir, but came with legacies charged against it. Much
juristic discussion was devoted to what ought to be included in a legacy
of, say, ‘my farm with all equipment’ or ‘household effects’; but the most
difficult question was what the law should do when estates were so
burdened with legacies as to leave no assets to the heirs to make it worth
their while to accept — for if they did not, all, including the legacies,
failed. Rather unsuccessful legislative attempts to deal with that situation
culminated in a Lex Falcidia in 4o B.c., assuring to heirs at least a quarter
of the assets.

On intestacy, in principle women inherited equally with men, but into
testamentary succession an asymmetry was introduced by the Lex
Voconia of 169 B.c., preventing people in the top census class from
instituting women in their wills. (It was still in force in Augustus’ day,
but in the late Republic became defeasible by various devices and was
nullified when the census ceased to be held.) And then on intestacy, by
analogy with the Lex Voconia, the succession of women in the class of
‘agnates of the nearest grade’ was limited to sisters of the deceased. One
procedure that may have begun as an expedient to circumvent the Lex
Voconia was fideicommissum hereditatis, ‘trust of the inheritance’, by which
the testator left the estate to someone who was entitled to take it, with a
request that the taker would in good faith hand it over to someone, e.g. a
daughter or a peregrine, who was not. In Cicero’s time the trust was still
legally unenforceable against the trustee, and some unscrupulous
persons were prepared to take the assets and ignore the trust, especially
as it could be argued that its purpose was to defeat a statute.‘

The idea that in the Republic women could not make valid wills is
common but erroneous: they had to perform a formal act of capitis
deminutio and have the authority of their tator before they could do so, but
there is no reason to think that that posed insuperable difficulties, and

See Jolowicz 253-4 and Watson 1971 (F 300) 183.
47 See the cautionary tales, Cic. 1 Verr. 1123-4 and Fin. 11.55, with Watson 1971 (F 300) 35-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

540 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

women certainly left property, especially mothers to their daughters.
Rome was a society in which women had both wealth and the power that
came from being able to dispose of it.

2. The law of property

The law of property (res) comprises the rules about ownership and other
rights over immovable and movable things.48 Roman law had an abstract
and total concept of ownership, dominium ex iure Quiritium® — the
corresponding English term is ‘title’. Only cives Romani had such title. Its
abstractness is shown by its complete divorce from fpossessio, legal
control: people who were not owners might lawfully possess something,
and in certain cases actually retain it as against the owner.°° Even possessio
had its abstract side, being not necessarily always the same as having
something legitimately at your disposal: a tenant of land, for example,
did not even have possessio of it, only detentio ~ no ius in rem (right in the
sphere of property) at all. Title, naturally, could not be conveyed to
another by someone who did not have it himself. Conveyance of title also
in some cases required a formal act. There was an ancient distinction
between res mancipi (land, slaves, certain animals, and ‘rustic praedial
servitudes’) and res nec mancipi (all other property): title to res mancipi
could be conveyed only by one of two formal acts, mancipatio or in iure
cessio, whereas title to other property passed by simple handing over,
provided there was an agreed legal causa, a ‘basis’, such as sale or gift or
dowry. These inhibiting distinctions had great tenacity. They were in
part mitigated by the principle of usacapio, whereby title was automati-
cally acquired by lawful possessio of something uninterruptedly for two
years (land) or one year (everything else). The praetors created an
important action, actio Publiciana, available to somebody who, in the
middle of usucapio, was deprived of possession (and could not sue for it as
owner, because he was not yet owner): it was an action with the fiction
that asacapio had been completed and title had passed. The actio Publiciana
is usually thought to have existed by the late Republic, though doubts
have been expressed recently.*!

Especially important to agriculture, and so an ancient branch of the
law, were the ‘servitudes’, by which an owner might surrender a partial
right over his property to be enjoyed by whoever owned a neighbouring
property. They were such things as rights of way and water or, in an

48 See, generally, Watson 1968 (F 297).

49 On Kaser’s view that the early Roman concept was different see Jolowicz 142 and the further
pages there referred to. For Kaser’s revised statement see 1985 (F 224).

50 The praetor gave the ‘possessory interdicts’ for the protection of possession as such,
independently of ownership; Jolowicz 259-63.

51 See Watson 1968 (F 297) 104-7; Jolowicz 265 with n. 4; Frier 1983 (F 204) 229 with n. 34.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 541

urban context, the right to unblocked light.52 Some similar rights did not
depend on the existence of a servitude but were available to anybody in
the appropriate neighbourly situation, especially the right not to have to
receive the neighbour’s floodwater and the right to require him to
guarantee that the state of his premises would not do harm to your
property.

Yet another partial right over the property of another was ‘usufruct’,
the personal right to use and to take the fructus (produce) of that of which
someone else was owner, fora term of years, often for life. Perhaps, as is
commonly suggested, usufruct originated as a provision for widows, the
children inheriting but the widow getting the use.

‘Real security’, the mortgage or pledge, which is yet another right
over someone else’s thing, was already highly developed by the late
Republic, though not mainly, as in modern economies, to make available
loan capital for commerce. It had two main forms, fiducia, where the
creditor took full ownership with a pact to return, and pignus, where he
took only possessio; but the lien (the pledge where the creditor does not
hold the object at all but has a right to take possession if the debt is
defaulted on) can also be found already in Cato’s agricultural contracts,
though whether the standard interdict and action for lien of classical law
existed so early is a matter of dispute.5

3. The law of obligations

The Roman lawyers divided ob/igationes*4 into those arising from
contract and those arising from delict.

The Roman law of contract bulks large in modern books ~ perhaps
disproportionately large55 — because of its interest as a comparative
subject. In our period its most striking advance was in the following
way. The age-old Roman verbal contract, the s#ipu/atio, ‘Do you promise
X?’, “I promise’, was brilliantly flexible and applicable to virtually any
lawful bargain, but it was unilateral (creating a duty in only one of the
parties, the promiser), it required the actual utterance of the formal
words and so the simultaneous presence of both parties, and it was stricti
iuris, which ineans that if the bargain was sued on and its existence
undeniable no plea such as mistake or duress or agreement not to sue,
and no counter-claim, could be considered by whoever judged the case
unless specifically authorized by the praetor to be pleaded by what was
called an exceptio. So there came to be invented a number of ‘consensual’
contracts, the bargain being created simply by agreement between two

52 Servitudes were rights in rem, property rights, not just contractual permissions. See, generally,
Grosso 1972 (F 210). 53 See Jolowicz 304. 5 See, generally, Watson 1965 (F 294).
55 On the relative infrequency of contract cases in the litigation see Kelly 1976 (F 227) 84.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

542 I4. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

parties, however phrased and wherever given, which were bilateral
(creating rights and duties in both parties) and bonae fidei, which means
that a zudex could, without specific instruction, take all pleas of both sides
into account.* The consensual contracts were sale, letting, partnership
and mandate. Consensual sale, emptio venditio, existed by at least the late
Republic.5? So did letting, /ocatio conductio, which covered various
economic arrangements that nowadays it seems strange to find under
one umbrella, from letting of land and dwellings to acceptance of goods
for cleaning and mending and to the hiring of the labour of workmen or
servants. The focus of legal discussion in /ocatio conductio was liability of
the ‘bailee’ (the person who had another’s goods in his charge) for
damage or loss; also, though, liability or otherwise for rent. In emptio
venditio it was warranty for undisturbed possession of the thing bought
and for undisclosed defects in it: how could a buyer obtain redress if he
was ejected from what he had bought by its real dominus, the man with
title, of whom he had never been told? And was it a breach of contract for
aseller not to disclose defects?58 The curule aediles in their edict applied a
very stiff rule, that traders in slaves (also, a bit later, cattle) must publish a
guarantee against a specific list of defects and be liable to let the
purchaser have his money back if any such defect emerged, whether
known to the trader or not. The edict applied only to market transac-
tions: it was later generalized, but hardly in our period.5? Much legal
argument was, naturally, generated by what should and should not
count as a defect.

Partnership, societas, is thought to have begun in early Rome as a
relationship between sui heredes holding their inheritances in common,
and it retained some of the ‘between friends’ atmosphere of its begin-
nings.©° Even by the end of our period it had hardly adjusted itself to a
world of arm’s-length commerce: the principle of one partner being a
direct agent for the others had not developed (except in the case of
argentarii, bankers), and the principle of limited liability was never to
develop, nor that of the company as a legal personality; and the only
companies in which you could hold transferable shares were those of the
publicani.

Mandate® was the contract whereby one person specifically instructed
another to engage in a legal bargain on his behalf. Actions were created

56 There were also contracts re, suchas loan without interest and deposit for safe-keeping, and the
contract /itteris arising through account entries. On /itteris see Watson 1965 (F 294) ch. 3 with
Appendix; Thilo 1980 (F 279) esp. 276-318.

57 Much earlier, if Cato’s agricultural contracts imply consensual empsio venditio; but that is
disputed. See Jolowicz 288-91; Watson 1965 (F 294) 40-1; Labruna 1971 (F 230).

58 See Cicero’s discussions of this as a moral question, De Or. 1.178; Off. 111.55 and 65—7. For the
extent of the remedy in the late Republic see Stein 1958 (F 271) 7.

59 See Jolowicz 293-4.

6 The attitude is plainly to be seen in Cicero’s speeches Pro Quinctio and Pro Roscio Comoedo.

61 See, generally, Watson 1961 (F 289).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW $43

whereby the one could obtain reimbursement for what he had done and
the other damages if anything had been wrongly done. Possibly more
important (and strictly not a contract at all — ‘quasi-contract’) was
negotiorum gestio, when A did something on B’s behalf without specific
instructions. It was important when people had to be abroad, in an age of
slow communications, and so was the legal basis for the procurator
absentis, your general agent when you were away.® Agency of one free
person for another proved a difficult notion for the Romans, and its
development hesitant. Slaves were enabled to engage in commercial
bargains as agents for their masters by the institution of peculium, because
the law allowed a master to be sued on liabilities incurred by his slave up
to but not beyond the value of the slave’s peculinm (there is limited
liability!); and by the end of our period the needs of commerce had
produced one further step in the shape of the actions (actio exercitoria and
institoria, respectively) available against the principal of someone put in
charge of a ship or a business for bargains entered into by that person,
whether slave or free.

Commoner, it is usually said, than ‘real’ security (the pledge and so
forth) was ‘personal’ security, the bringing in of the guarantor or surety.
Sponsor and fidepromissor were such sureties, but they could be accessories
only to the stpulatio: they ‘promised the same’, and so could be sued
instead of the principal debtor. The institution received regulation from
time to time, by legislation rather than by the zas honorarium.

The second part of ob/igationes is ‘delict’ (wrongdoings coming within
private and not criminal law: the corresponding English term would be
‘tort’). We have to consider three delicts: furtum (theft); iniuria (assault
and personal injury to free persons); and damnum iniuria datum (damage to
property). In all three, Roman legal progress was tremendous. The first
two had a Twelve Tables background, with death or enslavement for the
‘manifest thief? (roughly, the taker caught in the act), but long before
Cicero’s day physical penalties had given way to pecuniary, the ‘manifest
thief’ having to pay fourfold the value of what was stolen, the ‘non-
manifest thie? only double. By the late Republic, theft had come to be
given a much wider definition than we are used to: not just a taking away,
but any use of somebody else’s thing in a way not authorized by the
owner, or even taking your own thing back from someone (e.g. a pledge-
creditor) who had legal possessio of it. On the other hand, in spite of
disagreements the view prevailed that there could not be theft of land.

Aniuria, assault, is remarkable because the praetors, pretty early,
created an entire new system of actions based on the plaintiff's estimation

62 See Jolowicz 298.

63 Watson 1965 (P 294) 6-9. The fideiussor, who could be accessory to any obligation, is said by
Watson not to be attested in the Republican period; but the last item of legislation on the subject,

which applied to all three kinds of surety, was a Lex Cornelia, and so ought to be Sullan.
D. 41.3.38.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

5344 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

of his damages, and left the old Twelve Tables rules to wither away. The
Tables had had special rules against occentatio (the ‘rough music’)® and
convicium (abuse in public) as well as physical assault. Much dispute
persists as to when, and how far, these things were subsumed under the
various praetorian edicts, and as to how far, by Cicero’s day, éniuria
included what we should call libel and slander generally: Horace,
certainly, knew he had to be careful.® It was, anyhow, a major creation
of the éus honorarium.®?

Damage to property (including slaves) was governed by the Lex
Aquilia, a statute that may have been passed as early as 287 B.c. In this
case the development, which was massive, was by way of juristic
interpretation of the old, laconic statute. The issues argued were
especially about responsibility for damage: negligence sufficed, in
damage to property, to ground liability, whereas in furtum or iniuria there
had to have been a deliberate act; but the lawyers wrestled painfully with
the problems of indirect and remote causes of damage, and the praetors
assisted progress by granting actiones utiles and actiones in factum, which
meant, respectively, saying ‘Well, under the statute strictly you have no
case, but I will allow you an action on the analogy of the statute’, or even
*,.. on the facts that you allege’.

4. The law of actions

Turning to actiones, procedure, we must first survey what kinds of court
were charged with private law jurisdiction. The men in charge of civil
justice were two of the praetors, praetor urbanus and praetor peregrinus
(whose spheres, by Cicero’s time, overlapped completely); but they
never tried anyone. From very old times Roman civil procedure was
twofold. The first stage of an action was before the praetor, in sure. It
involved appearance of the parties, settlement, by pleadings, of the issue,
and referral of that issue in the form of a brief to one or more lay persons,
who then, at a second stage, apud indicem, tried the action.® These
persons who tried the action might constitute three different kinds of
court:’0 a single sudex or arbiter, ora small committee of recuperatores,” or

65 See E. P. Thompson, ‘ “Rough music’’: Le charivari anglais’, Annales 27 (1972) 285-312. The
leading discussion by Fraenkel 1925 (F 54) 185—200 is challenged by Manfredini 1979 (F 242).

6 Hor. Sat. 11.1.80-3. Though put with irony, the point is clearly serious.

67 See Smith 1951 (F 270); Jocelyn 1969 (F 84); Watson 1965 (F 294) ch. 16; Birks 1969 (F 187);
Manfredini 1979 (F 242).

68 For the latest general account see Frezza 1972 (F 203). Greenidge 1971 (F 68) covers both civil
and criminal. Kelly 1976 (F 227) and Behrends 1970 (F 19) are interesting but heterodox.

69 The common assertion that the ‘udex only had to decide facts is erroneous: he judged mixed law
and fact.

% Ignoring for brevity’s sake the Xviri stlitibus iudicandis, who took the important ¢ausae liberales:
see Jolowicz 199.

7 Cicero’s pro Tullio and pro Caecina were before recuperatores. See Bongert 1952 (F 189) and
Schmidlin 1963 (F 265).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 545

the big jury of the centumviri, deciding by majority. There is dispute
about the origins and roles of the last two, and whether they had
exclusive competence in particular fields. It is at least true to say that the
centumviri were mostly the forum for major inheritance cases, including
the querela inofficiosi testamenti: they were chosen three from each ¢ribus,
surprisingly apparently without reference to property class. Recuperatores
were picked by lot from the album indicum originally drawn up for the
criminal court de repetundis, with rights of rejection; so was, or could be,
unus index, but unus index could be chosen by the litigants themselves, if
they were in agreement, entirely at will.?2 Neither praetors nor judges
had necessarily any special legal competence; it was open to them, and
they were expected, to rely on the consultation of jurists. From
proceedings in iure a defendant could appeal for intervention by a higher
magistrate or the tribunes of the plebs, and if the praetor refused a
plaintiff an action he could try his luck before another praetor; but
judgement apud iudicem was inappellable, and you could not bring the
same suit again. All condemnations were pecuniariae, for a sum of money,
never for the direct recovery of the plaintiff's thing or direct performance
of the defendant’s contract.?3 The executive arm offered no public force
to assist a plaintiff to get his opponent into court, nor to carry out a
judgement when given; in fact ifa party was not present én iure no indicium
could be proceeded to. There were, however, sanctions: the person who
made no defence was imperilled by the praetor granting to his opponent
bonorum possessio of all his assets, and the same sanction applied to one
against whom judgement had been given but who failed to pay. Also
such conduct led to ‘nfamia, disgrace, with damaging consequences to
public office and status. Condemnation in all the delictal actions except
that for damage to property, and in numerous others where trust was
particularly involved, also resulted in infamia.™

Great importance is attached by scholars to one development in
Roman civil procedure, the ‘formulary system’.’?5 The earliest form of
civil procedure, that of the /egis actiones, beginning with the /egis actio
Sacramento, was characterized by rigorous forms of pleading in iure, fixed
phrases or certa verba to which a plaintiff must adapt his statement of
claim. Gaius in his Institutes gives a famous account’ of the frustrations
caused by that rigour; whether it hits the nail on the head is doubtful,
because any civil law claim could actually be brought as long asa plaintiff
was correctly advised about the forms, and new /egis actiones were added

72 See e.g. for the possibility of a freedman as iudex in an actio furti, Cic. Clu. 120. The freedom is
confirmed in chs. 86 and 87 of the tabula Irnitana.

3 See Jolowicz 204~5, and, on the crucial function of the clausula arbitraria as a way of achieving
return of the thing, de Zulueta 1953 (B 130) 11, 263-4.

™ See Greenidge 1977 (F 67) and other bibliography in Crook 1967 (F 41) 303 n. 77-

75 See, generally, Jolowicz 199-225.

7% Gai. Inst. 1v.11 and 30: cf. Watson 1973 (F 303) 389-91.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

546 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

from time to time: what they did not sufficiently allow for was complex
defences, and they were also not open to innovations modifying the ‘us
civile. However, Gaius correctly reports the remedy that was found,
namely that a statute, the Lex Aebutia, complemented by two (Augus-
tan) Leges luliae, introduceda new system of pleading in iure, per formulas
conceptas instead of per certa verba; the formulae were more flexible and
better adaptable to the claims of both sides, and they pushed the old
system gradually out. The date of the Lex Aebutia is not known, though
scholars mostly put it in the second half of the second century B.c. By
Cicero’s day, though all the /egis actiones except that known as per
condictionem still existed, there were also ‘formulas for everything’.”” The
real terms and effects of the Lex Aebutia are also endlessly disputed. If an
action with a formula was to have equal validity with one under the /egis
actio, it plainly had, as that did, to exclude further litigation once sued on;
so perhaps the essence of the Lex Aebutia was to give statutory force to
that ‘consumptive’ effect. In practice the formulary system enabled the
praetors to give force to the claims of defendants by granting exceptiones
in the pleadings before them; it also enabled them to invent new actions
of ius honorarium: actiones in factum, for example, would have been
impossible under the /egis actiones.

A fundamental characteristic of the Roman law of civil procedure (in
addition to the absence in principle of the professional except as adviser)
is that it was ‘adversarial’, like the English law: there was a contest,’8
decided on the basis of testimonies and arguments,” resulting in a
winner anda loser. An adversarial system has at its very heart persuasion
and counter-persuasion, so that advocacy was as vital as jurisprudence.
Only the advocate was not, as in English law, amicus curiae: his duty was
solely to do his best for his client by all the arts of persuasion at his
command; and since there was no professional judge to sum up and state
the law, the court was likely to be much at the mercy of the advocates.
That fact tends to be deplored, but it should be remembered that what an
adversarial system ensures is an equal chance for both sides to ‘do their
damnedest’.

J. Italy and the provinces

A brief word must be said about the administration of civil justice
outside Rome, and, first, in Italy.

Until the legislation of 90/89 B.c. and then of 49 B.c. most of Italy was
still peregrine, and the peregrine municipalities had their own judicial

7 See Jolowicz 218-25; Cic. ORose. 24 ‘sunt formulae de omnibus rebus constitutae, ne quis aut
in genere iniuriae aut in ratione actionis errare possit’. For the formula as a triumph of professional
jurisprudence, see Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 4527-3.

78 See Y.-P. Thomas 1978 (F 281) 98; Frier 1985 (F 205) 233-4 and 246-—50.

79 Or, which is equally significant, of an oath. The oath proffered by one party to the other, if duly
sworn, brought the action instantly to an end in favour of the party who had sworn, D. 12.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW $47

systems.® For some of the municipalities of cives Romani, praefecti were
sent from Rome to provide assizes.8! Once all the people of Italy had
become cives Romani their local courts retained a civil jurisdiction, but
with an upper limit to the value of the suits they could judge, unless the
parties were willing: all else had to go to Rome.®2

An account of provincial jurisdiction is given in chapter 15 below, so
only a few points need to be added on the civil side.83 How much control
did the governor exercise over the legal disputes between Rome’s non-
citizen provincials? Cicero says there was rejoicing in Cilicia when he
announced that he would leave local jurisdictions alone,® which seems
to imply that such was not always the case, and Verres intervened when
he chose; but governors could not possibly have dealt with it all. The
normal system emerges from such documents as the senatus consultum de
Asclepiadeand Octavian’s letters to Rhosos:85 there were local courts; the
provincials could request a hearing in the governor’s court; or arbi-
trators might be summoned from some outside city. The tabula Contre-
biensis® gives a glimpse of the governor of Spain stepping in — whether
on request or not we cannot tell ~ to a boundary quarrel between small
communities with a formulary procedure roughly on the Roman citizen
model, in 87 B.c.87 So far as cives Romani were concerned, we learn a lot
from Cicero about the constitution of the governor’s edict, about the
assizes he ran, and about the use of standard formulary procedure with
recuperatores chosen by lot;88 but things did not have to be thus, for we
also hear of cases where Verres exercised personal cognitio, i.e. tried the
whole case himself, and though Cicero uses them to denigrate Verres he
does not claim that the judgements were null and void. It seems to have
been possible, perhaps only for people with ‘pull’, to obtain transfer of a
civil suit to Rome,®? but judgement given in the provinces was as final as
at Rome.

89 See Harris 1972 (F 76).

81 See Girard 1901 (F 208) 295-305; Simshauser 1973 (F 144) 85-97.

82 Such a limit is referred to in the Lex Rubria and the frag. Atestinum, and ch. 84 of the tabula
Irnitana confirms that it must have varied according to the wealth and importance of the community.
See the List of select sources, p. 560.

% To the sources there quoted add the new fragment of what used to be called the ‘Pirate Law’,
specifying the powers of a provincial governor between the end of his term and his arrival back in
Rome; see the List of select sources, p. 560. On the evidence of the Verrines see Mellano 1977 (F
116).

& Cic. Aft. vi.t.15. Pace A. J. Marshall 1980 (F 111) 656-8, who thinks Cicero is referring to
‘xenodikai’, the passage cannot mean only that: ‘inter se disceptent suis legibus’ and ‘suis legibus et
iudiciis usae’ (A/s. v1.2.4) surely mean the whole of local jurisdiction.

8 RDGE no. 22, Greek text, lines 18-20 and no. 58, letter z, lines 5 3—6.

86 See the List of select sources, p. 560.

87 The Romans often dealt with local boundary disputes (which had political dimensions), either
being called in (see the sententia Minuciorum in the List of select sources, p. 560) or proprio motu, but
here for the first time (to our knowledge) with a procedure based on the formulary system.

88 See Hoffman 1976 (FP 213). 8 See A. H. M. Jones 1960 (F 87) 75-7.

% Though quaere as to the finality of judgement by a magisterial cognitio.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

548 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

II!

Such, in crude sketch, were the main rules of private law. We turn to the
mechanisms of its development and the ideas that propelled the process.
As for chronology, an attempt is made at the end of this chapter to
tabulate the first appearances of some novelties, but the reader is warned
that much is undated and disputed and that the first appearance of an
institution in the sources may be much later than its real beginning. It
looks as if the time from roughly the Gracchi to Catiline was one of
exceptionally rapid change, which included the new edicts restraining
intimidation and violence.*!

The first point to be made about the mechanisms of development is
that some changes were made not by the praetors but by statute.
Attempts to explain that as a mere matter of chronology (statutes the
earlier mode, praetorian interventions the later) are not free from
objection, and attempts to explain the statutes as having been used for
just one particular kind of legal development, social engineering, do not
account satisfactorily for them all.93 Damnum rested on a statute, iniuria
was wholly praetorian: why? Perhaps, indeed, the Lex Aquilia was
passed — and the Lex Poetelia de nexu and Lex Cincia de donis, too —
before major praetorian activity began.*4 And statutes were, certainly,
used for social engineering:® the Lex Cincia may be viewed in that light,
the Lex Voconia, the Lex Laetoria protecting minors, the Lex Minicia,
and all the sumptuary laws and the laws about the exaction of interest. At
a pinch we might add the Lex Cornelia validating the wills of those who
died in captivity and the Lex Atilia regulating the appointment of ¢utores,
perhaps even the statutes regulating the rules about sureties. But, for
example, the Leges Atinia and Scribonia about the rules of asacapio do
not really fit into that framework. As for the Lex Aebutia, possibly the
direct breach it made in the ius civile was simply beyond the conceivable
range of praetorian intervention.

For the main lines of progress, however, we look to the praetors, and
the edict of each of them (edictum perpetuum), in which they set forth what
actions at law they would grant during their year of office. It must just be
noted that, though grant or refusal of an action, im integrum restitutio,
missio in bona and such like® were in some cases provided for expressly in

% See Frier 1983 (F 204) 221. 92 Seen. 16 above.

93 Wieacker 1961 (F 309) 61-88, 1988 (F 171) 411-21, and Bleicken 1975 (F 28) 141-5 being no
more finally convincing in this respect than Schulz 1936 (F 267) 10.

% So de Zulueta CAH 1x!, ch. 21, 844.

9 So Wieacker 1961 (F 309) 66: ‘eine Wohlfahrtsgesetzgebung’. Augustus was to use statutes in
exactly that way.

% For denegatio actionis (refusal of an action) see Metro 1972 (F 246) and Ankum 1985 (F 175); for in
integrum restitutio (restoration of status quo) and other ‘praetorian remedies’ see J. A. C. Thomas 1976
(F 280) 111-17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 549

the edict, the praetors could, at least under the formulary system, apply
them at will. A Lex Cornelia of 67 B.c., ‘ut praetores ex edictis suis
perpetuis ius dicerent’, ‘that the praetors should conform their jurisdic-
tion to their annual edicts’, may mark a significant stage. It has usually
been seen just as a reaction to the vagaries of praetors like Verres, who
introduced ad hoc novelties in mid-term (to suit his private interests,
according to Cicero); but scholars have recently suggested that it
prohibited not just ad foc rulings but actual new norms introduced in
mid-term, so slowing down what was seen as too rapid a pace of
change.”

Tus gentium, ius naturale, Greek legal institutions Contact with the wider
world took the Romans beyond their éus civile to the notion of ius
gentium,°® but though that notion could have philosophical implications
it was for the Romans a matter of the practice of the courts, being those
rules, especially — but not only — commercial and mercantile, that other
people applied and it suited the Romans to admit, for application to cives
as well as peregrini. Greek legal philosophers talked about the ‘natural
law’ of all peoples, and the Romans were capable of picking up the
jargon; but they retained their pragmatic approach and refused to adopt
any institution they did not like into their positive law; so, for example,
peregrines had to stay outside the family and succession system. As for
slavery, it was convenient to label it a part of the éus gentinm and insist that
everybody had it. How much substantive law the Romans of the
Republic borrowed from Greece (as opposed to interpretative and
organizational concepts, to which we shall come) remains very disputed.
The whole notion, as well as details, of the Twelve Tables is seen by
some authorities as Greek; bona fides is held derived from pistis, inturia
from Aybris, and parts of mercantile law are thought to be borrowings.
On the other side it is pointed out that similarity (sometimes exagger-
ated) does not prove derivation, and that the notion of acommon Greek
legal system ripe for borrowing is out of favour.

Fiction, transference and analogy We have seen that one way to deal witha
peregrine in the Roman courts was by a fiction that he or she was a
Roman citizen. That particular fiction is heard of only in the delictal
actions for theft and damage, but it illustrates a favourite skill of Roman
lawyers, ‘deeming’ an X to bea Y to get round a procedural difficulty.%
Further examples are the fiction of completed ssacapio for the actio

37 See Metro 1972 (F 246); Frier 1983 (F 204), 221-2.

% Sce, generally, Jolowicz 102—7; Schiller 1978 (F 264) 525ff, Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 444.

® Gai. Inst. 1v.34-8. Wieacker 1986 (F 316) shows how this particular legal skill may have
developed out of the concerns, and so the thought-patterns, of the pontifices.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

550 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

Publiciana, the fiction that a successor under the praetorian rules was a
civil law heir for claiming possession of the assets, and the fiction that
something incomprehensible written in a will was “as if not written’; and
a neat new one has turned up in the tabula Contrebiensis.1© Transference is
another kind of ‘deeming’, when a formal act of the law is used to achieve
a quite different purpose. Thus, mancipatio, the formal conveyance of title
to res mancipi, was used to achieve emancipatio, the freeing of people from
potestas; and the manumission of slaves was a fictitious ‘suit for freedom’
on behalf of the slave, to which the dominus made no defence. Analogy,
thirdly, was a kind of ‘deeming’, as in the actiones utiles, the praetor
granting an action as if the case had come squarely under the statute. A
final kind was the use of procedures as formalities after their original
practical function had been abandoned. Mancipatio, for example, had
once been an actual sale, before it became a formality to achieve
conveyance; and the standard will, the sestamentum per aes et libram,
started as the actual lifetime transfer of an estate to a friend, but finished
up as a symbolic transfer having effect only when the testator died.

Bona fides, aequum et bonum, ‘equity’ These were important notions in the
progress of Roman law; they are best understood in a firmly pragmatic
way, as practical devices for balancing the certainty and predictability of
strictum ius (which says ‘never mind what may have been intended: what
was done has such-and-such legal consequences’) with a reasonable
flexibility about intention and a general sense of fairness.!°' The whole
ius honorarium was ‘the Roman equity’: for example, the exceptiones and
replicationes of the formulary system were an elegant equitable device to
enable the parties to bring up, in évre, every modification of strictum ius
that they wanted the i#dex to take into account. As for bona fides, its
complex background has been the object of many studies,!02 and it
sometimes receives a rather mystical treatment.!9 It is best seen at
practical work in the bonae fidei indicia,!°4 where all the modifications that
in strictum ins could only be granted by exceptio were conceded by the
equally elegant equitable device of writing ‘good faith’ into the formula
for the ‘udex: ‘quidquid ob eam rem Numerium Negidium Aulo Agerio
dare facere oportet ex fide bona’;!®% but its capacity to advance fair

100 See the List of select sources, p. 560.

101 See Schiller 1978 (F 264) s51ff; Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 506-9.

102 See Lombardi 1961 (F 234); Waldstein 1976 (F 287) 66-78.

103 Schulz 1936 (F 267) ch. 11 was too broad; every people tends to think it has a monopoly of
good faith.

1 Arising, ¢.g., from the ‘consensual’ contracts. See, generally, Wieacker 1963 (F 310).

105 The formulae with ‘quantam pecuniam ... bonum aequum videbitur’ and other variations
were essentially the same, pace Ciulei 1972 (F 195).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 551

dealing may be observed in another example, that of usacapio: it was not
originally a necessity for a valid ssucapio that the possessor should have
been in good faith when his possession began (for usucapio was stricti
inris), but by Cicero’s time bona fides had won through, and initial good
faith was required.'% Furthermore, the whole development of in integrum
restitutio and of the exceptio and actio for dolus malus rested on the notion
that strictum ius must not enable people to use the law for unfair ends.

Interpretation’ We come, finally, to the jurists, who, in framing their
responsa, had to interpret the law, e.g. to settle whether the words of a
statute or a will implied this or that, or whether some set of alleged facts
grounded such-and-such a claim or constituted such-and-such an
offence, and under whose inspiration the praetors developed the mecha-
nisms that have been described above. They also initiated the biggest-
scale branch of technical literature the Romans ever had, by writing
about the law. This stage of Roman jurisprudence coincided with the
apogee of Greek influence on Roman ideas, and so for Schulz it was the
‘Hellenistic Age of Roman Legal Science’. It is true that, labouring
under the conviction of Greek cultural superiority, the Romans acquired
the urge to turn every subject into an ars, a logical system based on
partition and division, genus and species.!°° Both Pompey and Julius
Caesar had plans to codify the law, and Cicero dreamt of an ars;!© and Q.
Mucius, cos. 95 was, according to Pomponius, the first jurist to organize
the civil law generatim.'' But it is worth while to distinguish, even if a
little artificially, between organization and systematization. Of the latter,
some aspects were, for positive law, pretty trivial. It may be doubted, for
example, how much it really mattered — especially as the jurists reached
no consensus — how many ‘kinds’ of theft or guardianship there were;
and although usufruct and servitudes were eventually, long after our
period, conceptualized as two sub-branches of ‘rights over someone
else’s thing’, iwra in re aliena,''' their positive rules were worked out quite
happily long before anyone thought of the logical connexion. Of the
organization of the law, on the other hand, one may judge less
negatively. Law (English as well as Roman) has gone through phases of
purely empirical development followed by phases when the best minds
saw that things were in a ‘chaos of cases’, and sought for general

106 See Watson 1968 (F 297) 54.

107 See, generally, Watson 1974 (F 304) ch. 9; Schiller 1978 (F 264) 373-83; Frier 1985 (F 205) 160~
8 and 190-4; Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 519-675.

108 Cic. De Or. 1.186~9; Brut. 152-3; Watson 1974 (F 304) ch. 15; Rawson 1985 (H 109) ch. 14.

109 See (with caution) Polay 1965 (F 255) and 1965 (F 256); d’Ippolito 1978 (F 217) 93-8; (again
with caution) Bauman 1985 (F 179) 78-83. On Cicero see also von Liibtow 1944 (F 235).

10 On the originality of Q. Mucius see Frier 1985 (F 205) 160~3. MD. gar.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

$52 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

principles from which decision might proceed more deductively.!!? Yet,
as modern authors remind us, law is not a closed logical system. Analysis
of the rationes decidendi, the criteria of decision, in the surviving responsa of
the Republican period — in so far as the jurists stated reasons at all other
than just prior authority — shows that they used all the techniques of
(common-sense) logical argument according to the problem in hand;!!3
but beneath the overt logic of legal reasoning lies, legitimately, a
casuistic process of comparison of case with case.'!4 Hence, whatever the
influence of Greek ideas on the organization of Roman law in our period,
it was the individual responsa of the jurists that carried the development
of positive law, and it is much less clear, from that standpoint, that there
was much that was specifically ‘Hellenistic’ about the increased sophisti--
cation of the law.1!5

The assertion of Greek influence on the interpretative thought of the
Roman jurists has recently passed through two trends and is currently in
a third.6 The first arose from the observation that the greatest
contemporary ars, in which all Roman gentlemen were trained, was
rhetoric, which offered a sophisticated armoury of generalized topoi and
of categories and distinctions, such as the different stasezs (types of issue)
in legal argument (especially ‘seriptum versus sententia’ (‘wording as
against intention’)). Some of the insights were valuable, but the case for
influence on the jurists, as opposed to the advocates, was never strong.!!7
For Schulz, who loathed rhetoric, it was Greek dialectic, from Plato and
Aristotle, i.e. logical philosophy, the art of definition and division,
which supplied the ‘Promethean fire’ that ‘transformed Roman jurispru-
dence into a systematic science’;!!8 perhaps enough has been said already
to indicate some limitations to the validity of that belief. The third trend
looks not to rhetoric nor yet to dialectic but to Greek legal and moral

M2). M. Rigg in Dictionary of National Biography \xiii, 350 says of Lord Hardwicke, an eighteenth-
century Lord Chancellor, that he ‘transformed equity from a chaos of precedents into a scientific
system’; and the famous aphorism of Justice Holmes ‘The life of the law has not been logic: it has
been experience’ comes from a plea for greater generalization in legal thinking: Oliver Wendell
Holmes, jr., The Common Law (Boston 1881, repr. (ed. M. de W. Hare) Harvard 1963, repr. 1968), 1.
See also Stein 1974 (F 273) 437-41.

43 See, generally, Horak 1969 (F 214); Schiller 1978 (F 264) 382; Seid] 1966 (F 269) 360 and passim.

4 See Wieacker 1971 (F 314) and 1976 (F 315); Bund 1971 (F 192) 573-9.

15 For the subtlety of the antique pontifical jurisprudence see Wolf 1985 (F 318) esp. 1: ‘...
durchdachte Zweckschépfungen einer rationalen Rechtskunde’. See also Wieacker 1986 (F 316) and
1988 (F 171) 310~40.

16 See, generally, Wieacker 1969 (F 313); Schiller 1978 (F 264) 373f. Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 347—-
52, 618-75, gives a more positive picture of Greek influence than is taken in this chapter.

"7 On the key personality, Hermagoras of Temnos, see G. Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in
Greece (Princeton, 1963) 303-21. Enthusiastic acceptance: Kunkel 195 3 (F 229) 14; dismissal: Watson
1974 (F 304) 194-5, Wesel 1967 (F 308) 137-9, Wieling 1972 (F 317) §6; limits: Bund 1971 (F 192) 578;
an Indian summer: Y.-P. Thomas 1978 (F 281); most recently, Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 662-73.

18 Schulz 1953 (F 268) 62-9; see also Stein 1966 (F 272) 33-48. More negative: Talamanca 1976-7
(F 278) 211ff, esp. 258-61; Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 618-39, esp. 638-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 553

philosophy, with which also all Roman gentlemen received some
acquaintance, for the guiding force behind the responsa of the jurists. The
most striking thesis!!9 asks us to find not only crucial differences between
the brands of Stoicism that influenced the jurists round Scipio Aemilia-
nus and the Gracchi, but a major shift between all that Stoicism and the
supposed Carneadean pragmatism of Cicero’s contemporaries, begin-
ning with Aquilius Gallus. Its philosophical foundations are under
challenge, not least on the ground that Roman interest in philosophy was
relatively popular and unspecific. Less controversial are studies that
more simply reassert the general importance of Stoicism as an influence
on Roman legal thought.!20 At least it may well be admitted that there
was an observable shift, whether or not motivated by Greek philosophy,
in the principles on which the jurists interpreted the law.!2!

Another current trend in scholarship, overlapping with that just
described, is to insist on the involvement of the jurists in the political
events and alignments as well as in the ideas of their age.!22 That is
welcome to the historian, who finds a wholly autonomous Roman
jurisprudence unlikely. Its practitioners forfeit some confidence, how-
ever, when they operate with notions of faction and speculative
prosopographical combinations such as are no longer current coin, and
engage in special pleading to rescue admired figures from insinuations of
politically motivated inconsistency.!23 In any case, this treatment illumi-
nates the relation of the jurists to public more than to private law; for the
main question to which it is relevant is what part they played in
promoting (or even in drafting) the statutes that were passed in their
time: no unanimity of view has been reached. Nevertheless, it is valuable
to be reminded that the interests of those not inconsiderable men were
not narrowly limited to the sphere of private law. They were, down to
(say) Sulla’s time, career-following members of an intensely political
governing class, involved, along with their peers, in all that concerned
the res publica.

Did they, during Cicero’s time, cease to be so, and does that betoken a
change in the way law was interpreted? Kunkel’s thesis!?4 of a class-shift

19 That of Behrends in numerous papers esp. 1976 (F 180), 1977 (F 181), 1980 (F 21). Criticism by
Horak 1978 (F 215) 402-14. The key personalities are Antipater of Tarsus and Blossius of Cumae.

120 E.g. Bund 1980 (F 193) and, generally, Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 659-61.

121 See, however, criticism by Bauman 1985 (F 179) 7-12.

122 See Wieacker 1970 (F 313A); Bretone 1971 (F 190); Schiavone 1976 (F 263); d’Ippolito 1971 (F
216) and 1978 (F 217); Bauman 1983 (F 178) and 1985 (F 179). See also, on Greek political influence,
Nicolet 1965 (c 115).

123 See, e.g., Guarino 1981 (c 70); Bauman 1978 (F 177) and 1983 (F 178) 274. Contra, Gruen 1965
(c 67).

124 Kunkel 1967 (F 228) 50-61. See also Frier 1985 (F 205) 252—-Go; Rawson 1985 (H 109) 89-90.
Criticism by Bauman 1985 (F 179) 10-11; accepted, however, by Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 595-6,
614-15.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

534 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

in the jurists, from being of senatorial, aristocratic origin to being
equestrians and Italian municipales homines (with implications as to the
kind of law we should expect from them) does not stand up well to recent
changes in historical emphasis. In spite of caveats, Kunkel believed,
more than would now be acceptable, in the equsfes as a business class with
a distinct ideology; and we do not know what he would have made of the
point that scholars now emphasize, that the aristocracy itself was not a
nobility of blood but had to resubmit itself to competition for office in
every generation. Moreover, anybody of non-senatorial origin he put in
the ‘equestrian’ category,!25 which gives a wrong impression, because all
these jurists finished up in senatorial careers. Novi homines some no doubt
were, aS were some non-jurists; but there is insufficient reason to
attribute to them as such any distinct legal ideology, certainly not a
‘business’ one. In any case, the thesis could only apply to the very end of
our period, for no major jurist remained all his life outside the senatorial
order until Ofilius and Trebatius Testa, and no major jurist till that time
was a mere municipalis homo. Contemporaries imply what the legal shift
was really due to: the triumph of specialization, which made jurispru-
dence and political careers increasingly incompatible. '26

Pomponius parades the great names, and Cicero puts a little flesh on
the bones. Sex. Aelius Paetus ‘Catus’, cos. 198, a friend of Ennius, wrote
the first significant law-book, ‘Tripertita’; it listed the clauses of the
Twelve Tables and gave each its appropriate /egis actio and a commen-
tary. The ‘founders of the ius civile? were M. Iunius Brutus, pr. 142, M’.
Manilius, cos. 149, and P. Mucius Scaevola, cos. 133, of whom the last
two were ‘Ti. Graccho auctores legum’!?’? and Manilius also the author
of the example-book from which Cato and Varro got their standard
forms for agricultural contracts. The most important Mucius Scaevola in
the law was, however, Q. Mucius, cos. 95. His books on the law, a
treatise on the ius civile arranged generatim and a book of oro: (‘distinc-
tions’), were used as the basis for commentaries in the ‘classical’ age; his
edict for the province of Asia was a paradigm; and he took part in the
causa Curiana, the most celebrated private law case in the Republican age,
which was looked back to as a historic moment.!28 Cicero’s own friends
and contemporaries amongst the jurists were C. Aquilius Gallus, pr. 66,
who invented the actio de dolo and the stipulatio Aquiliana, and Ser.

'25 Cicero would presumably have been so listed if he had counted as a jurist at all in Kunkel’s
eyes.

126 Cic. Att. t.1.1: ‘Aquilius won’t be in the race [sc. for the consulship]: he’s said ‘no’ and sworn
illness and pleaded his Panjandrumship in the law courts’ (‘illud suum regnum iudiciale’).

127 Cic. Acad. Pr. 11.13,

128 Seen. zoabove. The case was formerly hailed as the triumph of equity over strictum ius. Cic. De
Or. 1.180; 11.1401; Brut. 144-5; Top. 44; Inv. 1.121-3. Huge bibliography: see Wieacker 1967 (F
312); Watson 1971 (F 300) 44, 3-5, 94-6 and 1974 (F 304) 129-30; Wieling 1972 (F 317) 9-15, 65-6;
Bauman 1983 (F 178) 344-51.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 555

Sulpicius Rufus, cos. 5 1,!29 the most formidable systematizer. At the end
we come to Julius Caesar’s protégés, P. Alfenus Varus, cos. suff. 39130
(some of whose surviving descriptions of cases have the — for us —
precious feature that all the facts are related as well as the responsum)'3!
and A. Ofilius, who wrote the first substantial commentary on the
praetor’s edict.!32

Notwithstanding all the hazards of transmission — the danger of non-
representativeness, the possibility of alterations by the later writers in
quoting the earlier, the suspicions of interpolation — the best way to look
into the minds of these men is to see them at work: there follow six
examples.
(i) (Cicero, De Finibus 1 12, followed by Ulpian in D. 7.1.68 pr.) Cicero:
‘Shall there be discussion between those pillars of society P. Scaevola and
M’. Manilius as to whether the offspring of a slave woman should be
counted as “‘produce”’? And shall M. Brutus have a different opinion?’
Ulpian: ‘It was an old problem whether [human] offspring belonged to
the fructuary, but Brutus’ view prevailed, that the fructuary had no right
to such, for no human being can be the “produce” of a human being.’!33
(ii) (D. 9.2.27.22) ‘Ifa [slave] woman has been struck by you with your
fist, or a mare by some blow of yours, and has miscarried, Brutus says
you are liable under the Lex Aquilia as if it was rumpere.’'34
(iii) (D. 24.3.66 pr.) ‘In respect of things other than money that a husband
has by way of dowry, Servius says he is liable to pay for deliberate and for
involuntary fault (‘““dolum malum et culpam”’). That is the view of P.
Mucius: in the case of Licinia the wife of C. Gracchus he laid down that
because things forming her dowry had perished in the sedition in which
C. Gracchus was killed, since that sedition had happened as a result of the
fault of Gracchus, Licinia was entitled to be reimbursed for them.’!35
(iv) (D. 32.29.1) ‘When a legacy had been phrased thus: “Let Titia my
wife have the same share as [‘tantamdem partem quantulam’] one heir”,
if the heirs were heirs to unequal shares, Q. Mucius and Gallus thought

129 Syme 1981 (F 277) separates the jurist Sulpicius from the orator Sulpicius, though Pomponius
evidently thought they were the same: ‘in causis orandis primum locum aut pro certo post M.
Tullium’. On the jurist see Bauman 1985 (F 179) ch. 1, and, for his ‘modernism’, Wieacker 1988 (F
171) 603.

aS Pecks the man who, with Pollio and Cornelius Gallus, gave Virgil back his farm — if the first
and ninth Eclogues contain autobiography.

‘31 Alfenus in his Digesta is often reporting not his own responsa but those of his teacher Servius,
and mostly one cannot tell whose is the decision expressed.

'32 See d’Ippolito 1978 (F 217) ch. 5. On Aquilius Gallus, Alfenus Varus and Offlius see also
Bauman 1985 (F 179) ch. 2.

133, See Kaser 1958 (F 219); Watson 1967-8 (F 296) and 1968 (F 297) 215—16; Behrends 1980(F 183)
68-79. Some think the reason given is an interpolation, or is at least Ulpian’s rather than that of
Brutus.

13 Rumpere in the text of the statute probably meant direct physical breaking off of a limb. See

Watson 1965 (F 294) 244-5.
135 See Daube 1963 (F 200); Waldstein 1972 (F 286); Bauman 1978 (F 177) 238-42.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

556 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

the legacy was of the largest share on the ground that the greater
included the less. Servius and Ofilius thought it was of the smallest share,
on the ground that since the heir had been charged with making the
legacy it was up to him what share he would give.’
(v) (D. 11.3.16 (Alfenus or Servius)) ‘A master manumitted his account-
ant, who was a slave, and afterwards received his accounts, which failed
to balance; and he discovered that the accountant had spent the money
chez a certain little woman [“apud quandam mulierculam”]. The
question was, could he have an “action for corruption ofa slave” against
the woman, in spite of the slave being now a free man? I replied “Yes,
and also for theft of the money that the slave had made over to her”’.”136
(vi) (D. 14.1.1.9) ‘Ofilius raises the question, if he [an agent] borrowed
money to refit the ship and converted the money to his own use, does an
action lie against the principal [exercitor]? And he says that if he [the
agent] received the money on the ground that he was going to spend it
on the vessel and then changed his mind the principal is liable, for it is his
own fault for employing that agent; but if he [the agent] intended to
defraud the creditor from the start the contrary is the case.”!37

From the above six examples something can be seen of the careful
drawing of distinctions, and the readiness to consider both actual and
hypothetical cases, that characterize all Republican jurisprudence; also,
how little interest any of the jurists had in generalization. But they also
illustrate a change in the style of legal thinking.'38 On the one hand is the
expansive interpretation of the older jurists of the age, influenced both
(as some scholars hold) by a Stoic view of law as the human counterpart
of the natural justice of the universe, and also by a paternalistic and
patronal attitude to their society, as befitted men of the leading political
class. On the other is the positivist thinking of Cicero’s contemporaries,
a new, more specialist, generation, whether or not influenced by the
sceptical Academy, who saw law not as any projection of nature but as an
autonomous science that must derive its own rules and exceptions from
its own independent axioms. That is to state the contrast much too
starkly; but the direction of movement it represents is valid enough.

Evaluation of the private law of the Republic must begin with a
consideration of some features that it yet lacked, as well as some that
Roman law was destined always to lack.!%

1% The words ‘and also for theft ... over to her’ are commonly held to be interpolated.

137 The words ‘for it is ... that agent’ are commonly held to be interpolated.

138 See Watson 1969 (F 298) and 1972 (F 301). For good examples of the legal thinking of the older
jurists see Wieacker 1988 (F 171) 572-90. 139 See Watson 1974 (F 304) 111-12.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 557

Among procedural developments reached only at a later date we may
note the absence of civil appeal: until there was a Princeps there could be
no hierarchy of courts, since the assembly of the Roman people played
no role in civil jurisdiction.'40 Condemnation to direct restitution, as
opposed to condemnatio pecuniaria, also had to await the growth of the
imperial cognitio in place of the formulary system; and so, again, did
distraint on specific items of property, to replace the crude bonorum
possessio of a person’s whole assets.'4! Virtually no sign yet existed of
administrative law:!42 that depended on the growth under Augustus of
fiscal demands and a treasury interest in vacant and void inheritances. In
the law of persons, Augustus made, by statute, changes in the positions
and prospects of slaves and freedmen, and it was with Augustus’
invention of peculinm castrense (comprising anything a filius familias
received from or in connexion with military service) that the fils
familias first got a fund that was indisputably his own. The rules of
intestate succession were destined to receive further modification in
favour of blood relatives. In contract, if you look at a book on the
‘classical’ law it will be seen to contain sections on ‘pacts’ and ‘innomi-
nate contracts’, which represent the growth of legal recognition of
various sorts of agreement that lay outside the Republican scope of
contract, while assignment of debt and remedies for unjust enrichment
were two other fields where big developments were yet to come.!#3

It is commonplace to note the limited progress of Roman labour law;
and here we move into the things the Romans never developed much or
at all. Locatio conductio was never unravelled:!44 rules and terms of hiring
out one’s labour remained a tiny corner of a huge field of socially quite
different arrangements, and there emerged no sense of a need to protect
labour as the weaker bargaining side. Equally commonplace is the
observation that the Romans developed no general theory of contract,'45
but just stopped gaps where they perceived inconvenience. They never
got over their difficulty in conceptualizing true agency (though the
lawyers of the Principate were fertile in additional stratagems to get an
equivalent effect). As we have seen, certain features of law and society
made it less necessary: sons in potestate, and slaves, were automatically
direct agents of their paterfamilias or dominus in acquiring for him, and
peculium enabled them to be more or less so in creating obligations

140 See A. H. M. Jones 1960 (F 87) 77~83.

141 On distraint replacing bonorum possessio see Crook 1967 (F 197) 366-7.

142 D. 1.2.2.44, where Pomponius appears to say that Ofilius was the first to write a handbook de
legibus vicesimae, was emended by Huschke: see Lenel, Pa/ingenesia t 798 n. 3. Defended, however, by
Bauman 1985 (F 179) 83-5.

143 See, generally, Nicholas 1962 (F 248) 189, 200, 231.

144 Pace Lewis 1973 (F 232). So much for the Roman achievement in systematization!

145 See Nicholas 1962 (F 248) 165.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

558 14. ROMAN PRIVATE LAW

binding him. All that is simply an aspect of the fact that the Roman
economy remained pre-industrial and pre-capitalist and took slavery for
granted. But no less striking than what the Romans did not invent is
what they did not abolish: the institutions of patria potestas and ¢tutela,
dominium and possessio, res manicipi and nec mancipi, could not be shifted,
and had to be ever more ingeniously circumvented: that was the Roman
way.

Roman private law is much admired as the one independent creative
act of the Roman genius,'* the late Republic being its apogee of
creativity. It presents to posterity especially a paradigm of ‘lawyerliness’,
which is why it retains some interest for those who study law today.!47
An attempt has been made in this chapter to bring out what the
‘lawyerliness’ consisted of and how much the creativity did and did not
achieve. The historian is entitled to cast a cold eye, not to denigrate (for
the legal distance the Romans travelled in the 4oo years between the
Twelve Tables and Cicero, without the stimulus of an industrial and
scientific revolution, is tremendous) but to place in context, bearing in
mind that, if Roman law is open to criticism, so are all contemporary
systems. A commonplace of criticism is that Roman law was the creation
of a possessing class, reflecting their interests and enshrining
their values. Questions are, for example, asked about how much access
to those admired adversarial procedures was available to the man in the
street — questions about costs and distances and patronage (gratia).'48 It
can be seen how contract was assumed to be a bargain between parties of
equal ‘clout’, and what preponderant attention was lavished on
property, testament and legacy. The tenant with no as in rem, the slave as
chattel: these features show the proprietorial values that applied, just as
both the role of the oath in litigation and the importance of infamia as a
sanction show the societal values. Now, the historian must avoid
exaggeration: documentary evidence! reveals relatively humble people
operating in the obvious expectation that the theoretical system in all its
details was available in practice and applied to and against them; and the
answers to the questions about costs and so on are not as negative as is
sometimes made out. Roman law was not a fraud. But it was, undeniably,
conceived as a system ‘between gentlemen’, amongst whom, indeed, it
gave great legal equality.15°

The law of classical Athens offers a profound contrast. It catered fora
much more — if you like, the only truly — populist society; it was

1% Except by those who think they borrowed most of it from Greece.
47 See Frier 1985 (F 205) 193.
148 See especially (if with caution) Kelly 1966 (F 226).

149 Of the first and second centuries a.p., but that does not invalidate it. There is a mass of
relevant material in FIRA m1.

1590 The theme of Mette 1974 (F 247); see also Watson 1974 (F 304) Gon. 2; Frier 1985 (F 205) 192.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN PRIVATE LAW 559

grounded entirely on statute and people’s courts, with no place for edicts
Or jurists; yet it was evidently capable of generating the legal answers the
society thought satisfactory. Wolfgang Kunkel ventured the heretical
thought that some Greek ideas about law were ‘grander’ than anything
the Romans ever attained to,'5! but he was talking about Aristotle and
the Stoics,!52 and therein lies the fundamental difference: the Greeks
talked philosophy of law, the Romans talked jurisprudence.'53

51 Kunkel 1953 (F 229) 15.

182 He could have had some success even with the positive law: there is a case for thinking that the
Hellenistic states had a more sophisticated banking law than did the Roman Republic. See Vigneron
1984q (F 284) especially at the end.

1583 See Wicacker 1961 (F 309), essays 1, ‘R6mertum und rém. Recht’ and 3, ‘Lex publica’;
Galsterer 1980 (F 206). On Greek philosophy of law and its echoes in Roman thinking see Ducos
198q (F 201).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

560

SELECT NON-JURISTIC SOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF ROMAN
PRIVATE LAW OF THE REPUBLIC

Literature:

Cato Agr. 144-50
Varro Rust. 11.2.5-6
Cicero

Orations: Ouinct., ORosc., Tull., Caecin.
um Verr. 1.103-$4; 2 passim; 3. 28, 55, 69, 1353 5. 23

Balb. 21-4
Flac. 46-50; 84-9

Letters: Aét. 1.5,6; V.21,6; VI.1,153 VI.2,4; XIH.§0,2; XVI.15,2
Fam, 111.8,4; VU.12,2; X11.14,1 and 26,3; xv.16,3
Rhetorical works: De Or. 1.101; 166-83; 241

Top. passim
Philosophical works:
Acad, 11.23-9
Rep, 111.8-31
Fin. 1.12; 11.54-9
Off. 111.50-95

Inscriptions:
Lex ‘de piratis’

Lex Antonia de Termessibus
Table of Heraclea, 108ff

Lex Rubria and frag. Atestinum
SC de Asclepiade, lines 17-20
Laudatio ‘Turiae’

Sententia Minuciorum

Tabula Contrebiensis

Tabula Irnitana

FIRA ino. 9 (with JRS 64 (1974), 195-220,
text at p. 204, lines 31-9)

FIRA tno. 11

FIRA tno. 13

FIRA 1 nos. 19-20

FIRA tno. 35

FIRA 111 no. 69

FIR-A 111 no. 163

IRS 73 (1983) 33-41 and 74 (1984) 45-73

JRS 76 (1986) 147-243

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

561

CHRONOLOGICAL INDICATIONS RELATING TO THE
DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN PRIVATE LAW IN THE REPUBLIC

Before 200 B.C.

. 200-150 B.C.
Sex. Aelius, cos. 198, responding on
(?consensual) sale, D. 19.1.38.1
?Reference to praetorian iniuria,
Plaut. Asin. 371

Procedure under Lex Laetoria, Plaut.

Pseud. 303; Rud. 1380-2
Fiducia and pignus, Plaut. Epid. 697-9
Pact de fide et fiducia, Trinumm. 117

161: Reference to interdictal
procedure, Ter. Eun. 319
?Known already to Cato:
actio Serviana for lien, Agr. 149.2;
aedilician edict on slaves, D.
21.1.10.1

. 1§O-100 B.C.

The veferes debating usufruct, Cic.
Fin. t 12

129: Interdict uti possidetis (dramatic
date of Cic. Rep. 1 20)

123 and 115: actions on mandate,
Rhet. Her. 11.19; also actions for
iniuria by Lucilius and Accius

¢. 118 (not later): edict of P. Rutilius
on burdens imposed on freedmen

111: Procurator, /ex agraria, FIRA 1
no. 8, line 69; bonorum emptor, etc.,
line 56

326 Lex Poetelia (de nexu)
? ¢. 287 Lex Aquilia (de damno)
by ¢. 241 Lex Plaetoria (de
iurisdictione)
2210 Lex Atilia (de tutoribus)
204 Lex Cincia (de donis)

c. 200-190 Lex Laetoria (de
minoribus)

169 Lex Voconia (de mulieribus
instituendis)

Lex Aebutia (de formulis)

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

562

¢. 100-80 B.C. Lex Minicia (de /iberis), at least
before the Social War
Q. Mucius cos. 95 knows all the
consensual contracts and
commodatum
87: The tabula Contrebiensis, formulae
in Spain
The Leges Corneliae, including
Lex Cornelia de iniuriis —
By 81 (date of Cic. Ouinct.): bonorum
possessio against /atitantes.

¢. 80-70 B.C.
80 or 79: the formula Octaviana on
metus
296: the interdictum Salvianum for lien
76: edict of M. Lucullus de of
hominibus armatis
In the Verrines:
bonorum possessio ab intestato, SINE
RE, already old, 1 Verr. 1.114
bonorum possessio secundum tabulas,
SINE RE, already ‘translaticium’,
u Verr. 1.117
bonorum possessio contra tabulas, CUM
RE, against estate of freedman, II
Verr. 1.125
formula for vindicatio with clausula
arbitraria, u Verr. 2.31
By date of the pro Roscio Comoedo:
‘formulae for everything’
71: Metellus’ interdict de vi armata
By 70: denegatio of a cure civili action,
Val. Max. vit 7.5
¢. 70-Go B.C.
67: actio Publiciana
Aquilius Gallus’ inventions:
exceptio(?) and actio doli
stipulatio Aquiliana
265: actio Serviana (but see Cato
above)

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

563

¢. 60-50 B.C.
Ser. Sulpicius commenting on the
actiones exercitoria and institoria and
the actio de peculio
?56 Lex Scribonia (de usucapione
Servitutus)
The earliest actiones in factum
By 52: guerela inofficiosi testamenti, Val.
Max. VII.7.2

post 50 B.C.

The Lex Rubria deals with damnum
infectum

The frag. Atestinum has actiones
famosae

By 44: The interdict quorum bonorum,
Cic. Fan, vit.21

In Cicero’s Topica: actio negotiorum
gestorum, actio rei uxoriae

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 15

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

JOHN RICHARDSON

The expansion of the power of the city of Rome through the whole of the
Mediterranean world during the last three centuries B.c. led to the
establishment of Rome as the predominant military and economic force
in the region. It also made it necessary to develop ways of administering
so large and diverse an area. The patterns which emerged are now
usually referred to as the provincial administration of the empire, and
there is no doubt that some such collective title is necessary to describe
the various methods used by officials of the state to control the
communities and individuals with whom they were in contact. It is
important at the outset, however, to recognize that ‘provincial administ-
ration’ was not a Roman concept, at least during the period of the
Republic, within which the empire took shape.

I. PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE: THE ORIGINS OF THE SYSTEM

Although the English ‘province’ is obviously derived from the Latin
provincia, the meaning of the two is by no means identical. A province,
whether in a constitutional context, as for example the province of Ulster
or of Ontario, or in an ecclesiastical, such as the provinces of Canterbury
and York, is an area defined for administrative purposes. The provincia on
the other hand seems originally to have been a task assigned to a specified
Roman magistrate or promagistrate, in the fulfilment of which he would
exercise the ‘mperium granted to him in virtue of his election or
appointment. Although his task might well consist of using that
imperium, the executive power of the Roman people, in a military
command within a particular geographical area, it need not do so. Livy
several times describes an Italian tribe as a consul’s provincia, and during
his account of the Second Punic War he refers to the provinciae of the fleet
and the war against Hannibal in the same way.! Similarly the treasury is
called the provincia of a quaestor, and the urbana provincia marked the
allocation of the civil jurisdiction within the city. When used by Plautus

1 Livy 1.25.9 (‘exercitum ducere’), v1.30.3 (‘Volsci’), xxvit.22.2 (‘Sallentini’), xttv.1.3 (‘clas-
sis’), xxtv.qq.1 (‘bellum cum Hannibale’).

564

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE 565

and Terence, writing comedies in the second century,” and also in
Cicero,? the word seems to have a sense rather like the secondary
meaning in modern English, ofa concern or sphere of influence. When at
the beginning of each consular year the Senate assigned provinciae to the
various magistrates and promagistrates, what they were doing was more
like allocating a portfolio than putting people in charge of geographical
areas.

The significance of this for the understanding of ‘provincial administ-
ration’ is considerable. The first magistrates to whom provinciae were
given outside the city of Rome were sent to wage war on her enemies in
the surrounding area. In the third and second centuries, when provinciae
were allotted overseas, the magistrates and pro-magistrates concerned
were sent there as military commanders. As the main responsibility of
the man whose provincia lay in the region named by the Senate was the
command of the army stationed there, many of the functions which
would be expected of a provincial administrator in the modern sense
were his almost by default. However, the decision by the Senate to assign
an area as a provincia did not constitute a claim to possession of the
territory concerned. Although what precisely constituted the annexation
of a given territory by the Roman state in the first period of the extension
of its power through the Mediterranean world remains disputed,’ the
mere naming of it as a provincia certainly did not. Macedonia, for
instance, was first assigned as a provincia in 211 (to the consul P. Sulpicius
Galba), but this act of the Senate, while indicating that they wished the
consul to take command of an army there in order to fight against Philip
V, did not also imply that they wished the territory to become a part of
the Roman empire on a permanent basis. Macedonia continued to be
named in this way year by year down to 205, by which time the Peace of
Phoinike had brought to an end the First Macedonian War. In the second
century it was a consular provincia throughout the Second and Third
Macedonian Wars. Following the defeat of Perseus in 168, L. Aemilius
Paullus, after consultation with a ten-man senatorial commission, issued
laws to Macedonia, which provided for the abolition of the kingdom,
and its replacement by four allegedly independent states, paying taxa-
tion, though at a lower rate from that which they had previously paid to
the kings. This might well be considered the consequence of a decision
to annex Macedonia, and indeed the later epitomator of Livy’s histories
summarizes Paullus’ work in the language of the imperial period with
the words ‘Macedonia in provinciae formam redacta’.5 Yet not only was

2 Plaur. Capt. 156, 158, 474; Cas. 103; Mil. Glor. 1159; Pseud. 148, 158; Stich. 689-90; Trin. 190.
Ter. Hawt. 516; Phora. 72. 3 Cic. Cae/. 26.63; Féin. 1.20 (of the patterns of falling atoms).

4 See, for example Harris 1979 (A 47) reviewed in History of Political Thought 1 (1980) 340-2.

5 Livy Per. 45.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSprquivey © oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

‘ora of UI pom UEWOY sy, #1

Snaiqeiy
snul

VOIVN3AYAD
eupuexaiy

siwejes,

asnaeis, aBeyue) b

VIYAS ok. e1|21U3 Seonn
yoonuy, selsiposydy* eapied emai? wingeqhyiy

VIDITID —_auaHd KS” suetaye ant;
eawedy. snsaydg Seno S608

4
°
% *%
co
e

an
o-

eubnez visv soqse} :
eeyued e1lsopeddey wnwebseg, i és snjesueud

tumouying

elustiy

elyyieg

" °
oe. | w=, WNIUIYI09
& GY
: wn
snusyxng \; eluouogs
sniuog

wWNDNON

jwnidsed

(e] asey

Co
0

410001 00s
SNY} S8DUIAOJg «= VISV

erpruny

ePID

NOE

eluelounew

stiedsiy
7%
we eneu
>
9

VINVdSTtH

PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE 567

Macedonia already Paullus’ provincia, and had been since it had been
allotted to him by the Senate in the previous year, but once he left the
area it ceased to be a provincia until the praetor P. Iuventius was sent there
to oppose the pretender to the throne of the Macedonian kings,
Andriscus, in 149. It is indeed usual to date the annexation of Macedonia
from the allotment of the provincia to uventius’ successor, Q. Metellus,
in 148, and in later documents this year is taken as the beginning of the
provincial era. However, even then there is no sign that what one might
think of as typical ‘provincial’ institutions were set up. The four
republics from Paullus’ settlement occur in documents of the late
Republican and early Imperial periods, and from a passing remark in
Livy it seems that Paullus’ laws were still in use down to his own time.”
What happened after 148 was that the Senate regularly named Macedo-
nia as a provincia each year, and that, as a result, a Roman commander
with Roman forces was always in the region.

This example shows that the naming of an area as a provincia did not
necessarily result in its immediate annexation. A similarly ambiguous
pattern may be seen in the case of the Spanish provinciae. In 218 Hispania
was named as the provincia of the consul P. Cornelius Scipio, but, as with
the first allocation of Macedonia, there is no suggestion that this was
understood to be a claim to sovereignty over the area. The immediate
need was to face the threat of Hannibal, and subsequently the danger that
Hannibal might receive reinforcements from the Carthaginian bases in
Spain. For a decade after the successful expulsion of the Carthaginians
from the peninsula in 206 by Scipio’s son, the later Africanus, the Senate
seems to have had doubts even about continuing the Roman military
presence there. Still less is there any sign of the establishment of
‘provincial administration’. Although two additional praetors were
elected each year from 196 onwards with the needs of Spain in mind,
there was no systematic organization even of relationships with the local
communities for nearly thirty years. The few instances of taxation and
jurisdiction were purely ad hoc, and emerged from the immediate needs of
an army, stationed in a strategically important area.8

The reason for the examination of these two examples of Spain and
Macedonia in some detail is not of course to argue that the Romans never
acquired territory at all, still less that they were in any way peaceable or
non-aggressive in their relations with other states in the area. The
sending of armies and commanders to all parts of the Mediterranean
world was a commonplace of Rome’s foreign policy at this period, as it
had been within Italy in the late fourth and early third centuries B.c.
These instances do illustrate, however, that the establishment of institu-

6 See Larsen, ESAR 4.303.
7 Livy XLv.32.7. 8 See Richardson 1986 (E 25) esp. chs. 3-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

568 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

tions of provincial administration was not the object of the naming of an
area as a provincia, at least in the formative years of the third and early
second centuries. It was not necessary for there to be a provincia in order
for such institutions to be established, and, vice versa, a provincia could
exist in an area for a long time before such institutions were fully
developed. This can be seen most clearly by looking at the spheres of
responsibility which a provincial governor in the late Republic was
usually expected to undertake. They will be examined in more detail
later, but for the purpose of examining their origins it will be sufficient to
categorize them roughly under three headings: political and military
relations, taxation, and jurisdiction.

Political involvement with the communities within the geographical
limits of a provincia was evidently a major part of the work of a Roman
commander in the field. The prosecution of a war involved the
establishment and maintenance of alliances, and although this meant
different things in different areas, there was always some part to be played
by the man on the spot. Such activity obviously required the presence of
a magistrate or promagistrate and thus the existence under normal
circumstances of a provincia. However that did not necessarily imply any
permanence. As has been said already, there was considerable uncer-
tainty about the continuity of the Spanish provinciae, at least until the
decision to send out praetors from 196 B.c. on an annual basis, yet
already in 206 the younger P. Scipio had established a settlement for
wounded soldiers from among his own forces at Italica (now Santi-
ponce) just north of modern Seville, with a splendid view across the
valley of the Guadalquivir. This decision is the more remarkable
because, like others taken by commanders in the far-off region of Spain at
this time, there seems to have been no consultation of the Senate before it
was made, nor indeed, to judge by the fact that Italica appears to have
had no official Roman status until the end of the Republican period, did
the Senate take very much notice of it once it had been.® Such a lack of
senatorial involvement was much less common in the eastern Mediterra-
nean, where frequent links between the Senate and the Greek cities and
the large-scale reorganizations in the area which followed the wars
against the kings of Macedonia and Syria in the first half of the second
century led to the practice of sending out commissions of ten senatorial
legati, to assist the commander in making treaties and determining the
relationships between Rome and the various states involved. Yet even in
instances such as these, the making of major alterations in the status of
the various states in a particular area and the defining of their position

9 Galsterer 1971 (E 15) 12.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE 569

with regard to Rome did not necessarily lead directly to what would now
be considered the establishment of a province. The example of Paullus’
settlement of affairs in Macedonia and Illyria in 167 has already been
mentioned, but the same is true of the arrangements made by Ti.
Flamininus in 196 for mainland Greece and at the treaty of Apamaea for
Asia Minor in 188, after the defeat of Antiochus IV. A recently
discovered set of documents from Entella in western Sicily may record
the involvement of a Roman official in the refounding of the city in the
middle of the third century B.c., which would again illustrate the way in
which such interference with the activity of a non-Roman community
might occur long before ‘provincialization’.!0

If the relationship, at least in the third and second centuries, between
political involvement with the communities of an area and its becoming
a province in a modern sense seems somewhat vague, the same is true of
the extraction of revenue by the Roman state. As Cicero pointed out ina
well-known passage,!'! forms of taxation varied considerably through-
out the empire, and it is clear that in many regions the methods of raising
money were simply adapted from those used by previous regimes. The
best-known example is the collection of the corn-tithe in Sicily, which
was regulated by a code called the Lex Hieronica, after the king of
Syracuse, who used it in those parts of eastern Sicily under his control.!2
Moreover, although the presence of a Roman army regularly involved
levying cash and supplies from the local population, the collection of
such items on a regular and systematic basis, which might be recognized
as taxation, often took many years to institute. In Spain there was a levy
of grain and money to pay the troops from the Hannibalic War onwards,
but regular payments of grain and of silver probably did not begin until
the 170s.!3 Even in the rich provincia of Asia, to which the Romans sent
commanders after the implementation of the will of Attalus III, who
died in 133, the taxation seems to have been organized on a local basis
until C. Gracchus’ famous law of 123.!4 On the other hand monies could
be collected from areas which were not even provinciae, in which, that is
to say, there was no official Roman military or magisterial presence at all.
Stipendium was exacted as war reparations from Carthage after the First
and Second Punic Wars, and a regular vectiga/ was sent from the iron and
copper mines of Macedonia after Paullus’ arrangements of 167.

10 For these documents and essays on them, see ASNP 12 (1982) 771-1,103.

" Cic. un Verr. 3.12-15.

12 See Carcopino 1914 (G 34); Pritchard 1971 (c 120).

'3, Richardson 1976 (E 24).

4 Sherwin-White 1977 (D 75) 66-70; on Attalus’ bequest, see Braund 1983 (A 13) 21-3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

57° 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

Even in the case of jurisdiction, which was to play so large a part in the
work of provincial governors later on, there was in the second century
no inevitable connexion between the undertaking of such functions and
the existence of a Roman provincia. The Senate might, for example,
respond to a request for adjudication of a territorial dispute between two
Greek cities in Asia Minor by delegating a praetor to investigate the
matter and produce a judgement, even though the cities concerned were
not part of his provincia, or indeed of that of any Roman magistrate
whatsoever.!5 Although in some senses this might be seen as arbitration
rather than jurisdiction, the brief provided by senatorial decree for the
praetor concerned, on the basis of which he was to decide the question,
was clearly modelled closely on the formulae used in the court of the
urban praetor, who exercised jurisdiction between Roman citizens on
matters of private law. From earlier in the second century there are
examples of legal decisions being taken by commanders in areas which
were within their provinciae, but certainly not yet provinces. In a letter,
dated probably to early 190, M’. Acilius Glabrio, who held the provincia
of Greece as proconsul, wrote to the Delphians, detailing the land which
he ‘gave’ to the god Apollo and to the city, instructing them to ensure
that the allocations he had made were not interfered with for the future,
and promising assistance should the Thessalians or any one else send
embassies to the Senate.'® Here Glabrio is making legal decisions on his
own authority, though no doubt with general senatorial approval, about
a matter relating to a city which surely was not at this stage regarded as
being within a part of the Roman empire. His action is essentially similar
to that recorded on an inscription, dating probably from the following ©
year, which records the decree of L. Aemilius Paullus, assigning land
belonging to the people of Hasta, a town in the valley of the Baetis
(Guadalquivir), to the slaves (serve?) of the Hastenses who lived in the
‘tower of Lascuta’, and granting them their freedom while the People
and Senate of Rome see fit.!7 Here again a proconsul makes decisions
about legal status and property, apparently without reference to the
Senate. The permanence or otherwise of the Roman military presence,
which we use as one of the criteria for determining whether a provincia 1s
or is not a ‘province’, apparently made no difference in these two cases.

In legal and fiscal matters, then, as also in questions of relationships
with local communities, it is not possible to correlate the activities of a
Roman magistrate or promagistrate of the type that subsequently

5 Sherk, RDGE no. 7; for another instance, see RDGE no. 14, and in general see A. ]. Marshall

1980 (F 111).
‘6 RDGE no. 37. 17 FIRA 1% no. 51.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE 571

constituted what we would call ‘provincial administration’, with the
establishment of a ‘province’. It was not even necessary for a provincia to
exist for this sort of work to be undertaken. This illustrates that the use
of ‘provinces’ was not the only means employed by the Romans to
impose control on the various regions of the Mediterranean world in the
early stages of their transmarine expansion. Indeed, although there were
provinciae in the sense of military commands in most of the areas where
Roman influence was felt at some stage of the second century, the
exercise of such influence through a permanent military presence, and
thus the recurrent naming of an area as a provincia, seems to have been
developed only in the West, at least until the second half of the second
century. Sicily and Sardinia-Corsica were assigned to praetors as
provinciae from 227 onwards, and in Spain Hispania Citerior and Hispania
Ulterior became the provinciae of praetors with consular sm perium in and
after 196. In the eastern Mediterranean, although provinciae were fre-
quently assigned to consuls, and occasionally to praetors, no area was
given ona regular annual basis such as might lead to the establishment of
a ‘province’ until the second half of the second century. Only after the
defeat of Andriscus, the pretender to the throne of Macedon, by Q.
Metellus Macedonicus in 148 was there a regular Roman presence of this
kind in the East. Before that the Romans employed other means of
ensuring that the Greeks conformed to Roman policy,!8 and even after
148 the rest of the peninsula was controlled by the oversight of the
Roman commander in Macedonia.!9 It should be clear from what has
already been said that the Senate did not refrain from sending magis-
trates and promagistrates to the East because of any fear of provincial
administration either overstretching available resources or making
individuals too powerful by service overseas, as such administration was
not part of the purpose of a provincia at this date. The difference in Roman
approach to the two regions, West and East, was caused rather by the
different methods needed to exercise control over them. If this could be
achieved satisfactorily without the presence of an army and its com-
mander, there was no need to go to the expense and inconvenience of
sending them. A provincia was a commission by the Senate to a magistrate
or promagistrate for the fulfilment of a particular task, and in this early
period the task was, in the case of overseas areas, largely military. It was
from such origins that the provinces of the later Republic and Empire
developed, and, as will be seen, many of the particular characteristics of
the later system derive from the circumstances of these origins.

18 Derow 1979 (B 26).
'9 Sce for instance the letter of Q. Fabius to Dyme (RDGE no. 43).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

572 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

II. THE BASIS AND LIMITS OF THE GOVERNOR’S POWER

Because the province was developed from and remained based upon the
provincia, the power of the provincial governor was always that of a
holder of imperium, either as a magistrate or as a promagistrate. The
magistrates held office as a result of election by the people, which in the
case of the consuls and praetors who were sent overseas to provinciae,
meant the comitia centuriata.?° They held their :mperium as a consequence
of their office. The position of a promagistrate (proconsul or proprae-
tor) was somewhat different. Usually, in the late Republic, he was a man
who had previously held either the praetorship or the consulship, and
had been allowed to continue to act as though he were still a magistrate
after the end of his term of office, by the prorogation of his imperium by
decree of the Senate. He was no longer, properly speaking, a magistrate,
and could not, for instance, exercise his imperium within the sacred
boundary of the city of Rome; but despite his status as a private citizen he
was enabled to command Roman forces and undertake the other work of
a magistrate within his provincia.24 Such authority, normally given by a
decree of the Senate, was a most useful method of extending the term of a
commander in the field beyond the limits of an annual magistracy. This
way of providing authority for men not holding a magistracy by means
of imperium pro consule ot pro praetore could be used even when the
individual concerned did not already hold imperium by virtue of his
tenure of a magistracy in the previous year. The Roman forces in Spain
between 210 and 196 were commanded by a series of men who held
imperium pro consule given to them by a measure passed either by the
comitia centuriata or the comitia tributa,2 and ina similar way, Pompey was
given command to fight against the rebellious M. Lepidus in 77, and later
in the same year received imperium pro consule to take an army to Spain to
assist in the war against Sertorius.

In such cases, the holder of imperium was allotted a provincia. In strict
logic the provincia did not exist until it had been so allotted, although by
the late Republic the idea of the provincia as a geographical area was so
much part of Roman thought that Cicero could write in the year 50 of the
provinciae being sine imperio as a result of the persistent veto of the tribune
Curio.23 It appears from Cicero’s speech to the Senate in 56 on the subject
of the consular provinces that every consul had to have a provincia in

20 See above, p. 564, and Vol. vii2.2, 202-3.

21 On the private status of the proconsul, see Livy xxxvut.qz.10, and Mommsen 1888 (a 77) 2,
642.

22 Scipio in 210 (Livy xxv1.18-20); L. Cornelius Lentulus and L. Manlius Acidinus in 206 (Livy
XXVIL.38.1); C. Cornelius Cethegus in 201 (Livy xxx.41.4—5); Cn. Cornelius Blasio and L. Stertinius
in 199 (Livy xxxt.50.11).

23 Cic. Aft. VIr.7.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE GOVERNOR’S POWER 573

order to function at all,24 and the same could have been said of any holder
of imperium.

Under normal circumstances the provinciae were assigned to magis-
trates and promagistrates by the Senate. Through the third and for most
of the second century this seems to have been done at the first meeting of
the Senate in each consular year. The provinciae were not assigned to
individual magistrates by name, but the areas to be made praetorian and
consular commands were specified, and then either divided between the
appropriate magistrates by lot (sortitio) or by mutual agreement (compara-
tio). This last could be used only by consuls, although there is some
evidence that consuls on occasion interfered with the allotment of
Praetorian provinciae, probably by improper and devious means.?5 Only
very occasionally did the Senate assign a command extra sortem to a
particular individual.

Promagistrates were in a different position, no doubt because their
imperium as well as their provincia usually depended upon a decree of the
Senate, and consequently their commands were extended or altered
simply by such a decree. Of course when a man was made a promagis-
trate in order to be sent to a previously specified provincia, the area was
named before the individual concerned; and very occasionally the lot
was used to determine which of two promagistrates should take a
particular provincia,26 but these exceptions tend to prove the normal rule.

In the last hundred years of the Republic, various changes were made
in the ways in which magistrates and promagistrates were assigned to
provinciae. These were the result of the growing importance of overseas
commands from the middle of the second century onwards. In 123 or 122
the tribune C. Gracchus proposed a law which required the Senate to
decide upon the consular provinciae before the consuls were elected.2’
This had the result that it was impossible for a particular command to be
given to a particular consul, since at the time of the decision about
provinciae the consuls for the following year were still unknown. A more
radical way of ensuring that an individual did get a particular command
emerged some fifteen years later. In 107 C. Marius, who had been elected
consul after an electoral campaign which included severe criticism of Q.
Metellus and his conduct of the war against Jugurtha, found himself
excluded from the provincia of Numidia by a decree. of the Senate which
continued Metellus in his command. Marius responded to this by having
a tribune, T. Manlius Mancinus, propose a law to give the command to

24 Cic. Prov. Cons. 37.

25 For instance, Cic. Fam. v.2.3—-4.

26 In 173, P. Furius Philo and Cn, Servilius Caepio, returning from Hispania Citerior and Ulterior
respectively, were required to cast lots to determine which would replace N. Fabius Buteo, the

praetor assigned to Citerior, who had died en route for his provincia (Livy xutl.q.2—-3).
27 Cic. Dom. 24, and see Lintott, ch. 3 above, 79~80.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

574 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

Marius instead. Before this time the popular assemblies had been used
only rarely in the assignment of provinciae. P. Scipio, when consul in 206,
had threatened to propose to the people through the tribunes that he
should be given Africa when it seemed that the Senate would refuse to
assign it to him, but in the event the threat was enough to persuade the
Senate to change its mind.?8 In 167 a praetor, M’. Iuventius Thalna, had
been about to bring a bill to the people to declare war on the Rhodians,
and to choose one of the magistrates of the year to lead a fleet against
them. He was only prevented by two tribunes, who were prepared to
interpose a veto.29 The only occasion before 107 when such a move was
successful was in 147, when (according to Appian)*° the tribunes had
brought a bill to the people that Africa should be assigned to Scipio
Aemilianus extra sortem, despite the opposition of his colleague in the
consulship, C. Livius Drusus.

After this date, there were a number of occasions in the last decades of
the Republic on which such methods were used. Marius again attempted
to gain a command by a tribunician law in 88, when P. Sulpicius
proposed that he rather than Sulla should be sent against Mithridates,
but this was reversed by Sulla after he had marched on Rome.*! In
addition to the famous laws which provided commands for Pompey
against the pirates (Lex Gabinia of 67) and Mithridates (Lex Manilia of
66), and for Caesar, Pompey and Crassus in the 50s (Lex Vatinia of 59 and
the Leges Licinia Pompeia and Trebonia of 55) there are other examples
of consuls receiving their provinciae by such means in this period. M’.
Acilius Glabrio, consul in 67, obtained Bithynia and Pontus by another
law of the tribune A. Gabinius, and Gabinius himself, when consul in 58,
and his colleague L. Calpurnius Piso, both received their provinciae by
means of laws proposed by the tribune P. Clodius. There may well be
other cases of which no trace remains in our sources. An inscription
which has recently come to light on Cnidus, and of which another copy
has long been known from Delphi, contains a tribunician law from the
last years of the second century, which includes among its provisions the
setting up of a praetorian provincia of Cilicia.32 This piece of legislation,
which may have come from the group of populares which included
Saturninus and Glaucia, illustrates the way in which the normal
mechanisms of the Senate might be circumvented.

Despite the occasional creation of proconsular ‘mperia for men sent to
provinciae, the basic model for overseas commands during the Republic
was that of the city magistracies, and in particular the praetorship. In

28 Livy xxvill.45.1-7. 29 Livy xiv.21.1-8. 30 App. Pun. 112.533.

| App. BCiv. 1.635.283, states that Sulla and his colleague, Q. Pompeius Rufus, were then voted
their provinciae by the people, but this is probably erroneous.

32 Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE GOVERNOR’S POWER 575

fact, on several occasions Cicero uses the word praetor when he is
referring to governors in general.>3 The first move towards the provin-
cial governorship being seen as a separate magistracy was the Lex
Pompeia de provinciis of 52.34 This law, following on a decree of the
Senate of the previous year which contained similar provisions,*> laid
down a compulsory interval of five years between the tenure of a
magistracy and the taking up of an overseas command. The reason for
the law was probably a desire to prevent those who aspired to the
magistracies from expending large sums on their electoral campaigns,
with the intention of recouping their outlay by exploiting a province:
that at least is the context of the senatorial decree of 53. In the event the
law was short-lived, for the allocation of provinciae was disrupted in 50 by
the vetoes of the tribune Curio, and the scheme was subsequently
abandoned as a result of the outbreak of the civil war in 49.36 However,
by separating the control of the provinces from the city magistracies, it
foreshadowed the pattern which was to emerge as a result of Augustus’

reorganization of the command structure of the empire. Even so it was
not until the use in the later imperial period of the phrase praeses provinciae
to describe governors in general that the nomenclature of such officials
became separated from that of the city magistracies.>”

It was no doubt the origins of the province and its governor in the
magistracies of the city of Rome, and especially the military magistracies, .
that led to the inadequacy and inappropriateness of the controls and
limitations imposed on governors. A commander in the field could not
in practice be under constant supervision from Rome, and moreover the
whole tradition of imperium from the time of the Kings favoured the
independence of action of its holders. Such men were acting for the
people of Rome, who had chosen them by election, rather than as
servants of the state, and the practical results can be seen in the freedom
of decision which they enjoyed and in the length of time it took for any
effective means of restricting that freedom to be developed.

Under normal circumstances the only part that the Senate played in
the conduct of the affairs of a province was the sending out and
equipping of the governor, and, if necessary, the renewal of his provincia
at the beginning of each year. This was, of course, of major importance
to governors, and could well affect their behaviour. It was with this in
mind that they took care to inform the Senate about their activities and

33 E.g. Cic. 1 Verr. 3.125, OFr 1.1.22.

4 Dio xx.56.1. See Marshall 1972 (F 110).

35 Dio x.46.2. 36 See above ch. 10, p. 419.

37 Praeses begins to appear in official contexts at the beginning of the second century a.p. (e.g.
Tacitus, Ann. vi.qt, Trajan ap. Pliny Ep. x.44), and had become the general term by the beginning of
the third (Macer, D. 1.18.1). Already in the first century a.D. generalized phrases such as ‘eos... qui
in provincis praessent’ (Tabula Siarensis col. 11(b), tine 26, of a.p. 19) were in use.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

576 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

the state of their territory, at least from the military standpoint. It is
noticeable that the letters which Cicero sent to ‘the magistrates and the
Senate’ from Cilicia in 51 were both entirely about military matters,
although we know from his other correspondence that he was involved
with a far greater range of activities.58 His assumption appears to have
been that it was about his campaigns, and the preparedness of the area to
repel any threat of invasion, that the Senate wished to be kept informed.
On other occasions commanders wrote to the Senate to inform them of
victories or defeats, or to request further supplies of food, equipment or
cash in order to continue the military campaigns which they had in hand.
For instance the two Scipios in Spain in 215 wrote to ask for money and
supplies, as A. Cornelius Mammula, the propraetorian commander in
Sardinia, had done the previous year, and as Pompey was to do when
fighting Sertorius in Spain in 74.%° Similarly the younger P. Scipio, the
later Africanus, reported back to the Senate about his success in
capturing New Carthage in 209, and throughout the early part of the
second century, for which we have Livy’s account of senatorial proceed-
ings on an annual basis, there was a steady stream of reports coming to
the Senate on the military situation both in the long-standing provinciae of
the West (particularly the two Spains), and from the commanders sent to
provinciae in the Greek world.

In other areas of the work of the magistrate or promagistrate in his
provincia, there is surprisingly little sign of senatorial involvement. There
are references to the need to determine the boundaries of the area
assigned. For instance, the two praetors who were the first to be sent to
the two Spanish provinciae in 196 were instructed to set the limits of their
areas; and the law which set up the praetorian provincia of Cilicia at the
very end of the second century also ordered the next commander to be
sent to Macedonia to adjust the bounds of that provincia following the
new conquests made by T. Didius.4® The same law also instructs this
official to see to it that the public revenues from this area should be
collected, as seems best to him, and he is ordered to spend at least sixty
days of each year of his tenure of the provincia in these parts. Such precise
instructions are unusual, and may be the result of the desire of the author
of this law, who was in any case dealing with business more commonly
handled by the Senate, to exercise greater control than usual over
magistrates and promagistrates. Even so there is very little on the
inscription as we have it imposing limits on what the various governors

38 Cic. Fam. xv.1 and 2.

39 Spain: Livy xx1i1.48.4 — 49.4. Sardinia: Livy xxitt.21.4. Pompey: Sall. H. fr. 2.98; Plut. Pomp.
eo Spain: Livy xxxu.28.11. Macedonia: Hassall, Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170) 204, Cnidus

col. rv, lines 25~31 (the newly conquered Caenic Chersonese was to be incorporated into his
provincia).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE GOVERNOR’S POWER $77

who are appointed or referred to are permitted to do while in their
provinciae. This is particularly striking because the law does forbid a
governor to leave his provincia either with or without an army, and goes
on to describe what the praetors to whom Asia and Macedonia were
assigned may do after they have left those areas, particularly with respect
to legal matters.*!

As might be expected, it seems that only rather generalized instruc-
tions would be given to a governor on his assignment to a provincia, and
that while he was there, it was mostly military matters which concerned
the Senate. Once he had left his area of command, his émperium was no
longer automatically operative, and he needed more explicit authority to
act in the capacities in which he had acted while in his provincia. Similarly
it was virtually impossible either by ordinary administrative means or
through the courts to prevent a governor misbehaving, or to punish him
if he did, while he was in his provincia and in possession of his émperinm.
Theoretically a governor could have his imperium removed, but in
practice so severe a measure was used only in exceptional circumstances.
In 136 M. Aemilius Porcina, the proconsul in Hispania Citerior, not only
attacked the tribe of the Vaccaei in direct contravention of an order
brought to him by a messenger from the Senate, but subsequently
suffered a disastrous defeat, and asa result was deprived of his éwperium.*2
Even in this case it is unlikely that Porcina would have been treated so
harshly had not his misdemeanour occurred at the same time as the
Senate was debating the repudiation of the treaty of Mancinus.‘3
Normally, though a governor might slaughter and enslave the inhabi-
tants of his provincia, as Ser. Sulpicius Galba did the Lusitanians in 150, or
exploit them ruthlessly, as Cicero alleged Verres had done in the 7os, no
action would be taken against him during his tenure.

Once he had returned to Rome, however, the situation was different.
Already by the year 171 it was possible for provincial communities to
bring complaints against provincial governors, although the procedure
seems to be diplomatic rather than to involve the lawcourts. In that year,
embassies were received in Rome, objecting to the greed and arrogance
of three of the men who had been sent out to the two Spanish provinciae
over the past six years. The Senate arranged for the hearing of their suit
by boards of recuperatores, appointed specially for the purpose, and for
the selection by the ambassadors of four distinguished Romans to
represent them. In the event, despite it being said that they were clearly
guilty of the illegal seizure of money, all three accused seem to have
escaped scot-free. One was acquitted after a prolonged hearing, and the

41 Cnidus col. 111, lines 32-9; col. 1v, lines 32-9.

42 App. Hisp. 81.351 — 83.358.
43 See Lincott, ch. 2 above, p. 21, and Vol. vimt?, 135.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

578 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

other two removed themselves from Roman jurisdiction by withdraw-
ing to Tibur and Praeneste.*# However, although the outcome was
unsatisfactory, and there were allegations that the praetor who had been
put in charge of the matter colluded with the accused, the Senate had at
least shown that it was prepared to listen to such accusations from the
provincials.

In the latter half of the second century, the means by which such
complaints were dealt with were regularized. In 149 a tribune of the
plebs, L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, introduced a law to set up a permanent
court, the quaestio de repetundis, to hear cases against magistrates or pro-
magistrates accused of the illegal seizure of money. Almost nothing is
known about the detail of this/law, but certainly by the time C. Gracchus
had proposed his legislation on the same topic in 123, it was possible fora
provincial to bring a case in Rome against a provincial governor on this
charge.*> Indeed this became the main and the only formal means by
which non-Romans could obtain satisfaction for wrongs done to them
by Roman officials, so that Cicero described the quaestio de repetundis as the
defence of the allies against such depredations.*¢ Sulla seems to have
expanded the scope of the law, and Caesar in his consulship in 59
enlarged it still further. Cicero’s references to Caesar’s Lex Julia, in the
letters he wrote while governor in Cilicia in 51, show that this at least
acted as a check on certain forms of exploitation. However, as a
protection of the provincials, this court had certain obvious weaknesses.
As already mentioned, it could only be used after the governor returned
to Rome, and even then only by such provincials as were able to
undertake the considerable expense of mounting a prosecution in Rome
itself. In practice only those who had the resources of considerable
wealth and, more important still, friends in high places in Rome, were
likely to succeed, and such people might in any case have found less
formal ways of using their influence to inhibit the actions of a governor
against them at an earlier stage. Even if a prosecution was successful,
there was no guarantee that the plaintiff would receive any of his money
back, despite the careful provisions which, for instance, C. Gracchus
included in his law to this end.47 It was still possible, as it had been in 171,
for the accused to withdraw beyond the reach of Roman jurisdiction, and
C. Verres, whom Cicero prosecuted in 70 on behalf of the Sicilians, was
still enjoying his ill-gotten gains in Massilia in 43 when Marcus Antonius
had him proscribed in order to acquire his wealth.

4 Livy XLUL.2.1-2.

45 On the history of the quaestio de repetundis, see Balsdon 1938 (F 12) and Lintott 1981 (F 104). On
Gracchus’ law Sherwin-White 1982 (c 133).

% Cic. Div. Caec. 17-18. 97 Lex rep. (FIRA 1? no. 7) lines 57ff.

48 Pliny HN xxxiv.3.6; Lactantius Div. Inst. 1.4.37.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE GOVERNOR’S POWER 579

The other law which, by the late Republic, might be used against a
governor for acts done while in his provincia, was Sulla’s Lex Cornelia de
maiestate. From Cicero’s remarks about this law, it is clear that it
prohibited a commander from leaving, or leading an army out, of his
provincia, conducting a war on his own account, or attacking a foreign
kingdom without explicit instructions from the Senate or People of
Rome.* As has already been seen from the law which set up the provincia
of Cilicia in about 100, some of these provisions had already appeared
before Sulla’s time, and Cicero also attests this.5° Besides regulations
about particular areas, such as those about Macedonia and Asia, there is
also mention in this law of a more general statute, a Lex Porcia, which
seems to have laid down similar rules. It seems clear that in this, as in
other parts of his legislation, Sulla was codifying earlier attempts to
define the limits of a governor’s actions. It is noteworthy that, when he
does so, it is by means of a charge of demeaning the majesty of the
Roman people, by misuse of the smperium which the governor exercises
on behalf of the Roman people. This emphasizes again that the provinciae
are seen in relation to the magistrate or promagistrate to whom they are
assigned, and that those officials are seen as holders of the military power
of the whole state. The particular misuses which we know to have been
prohibited by these various laws all relate to the military function of the
governor, and, more significantly, are described not in terms of the
‘provinces’ or of some idea of provincial administration, but of appro-
priate, or (more properly) inappropriate actions taken by a holder of
imperium.

It is perhaps surprising to discover that even in the last century of the
Republic, when Roman officials were being sent out to areas all round
the Mediterranean, there was no mechanism by which the Senate might
prevent the misgovernment of those areas by the men it had despatched.
This might seem more remarkable still when it is remembered that the
laws which provided penalties for those particular forms of misbeha-
viour which were recognized depended for their implementation, like all
other parts of the Roman law, on prosecutions undertaken by private
individuals. This can really only be placed in a true perspective when the
origins of what became the administration of the empire are kept in
mind, A magistrate or promagistrate in an overseas provincia was not
originally or (in the Republican period, at least) primarily administering
an area of Roman territory, but commanding Roman forces in a foreign
land. It was important that he should not exacerbate the situation there
unnecessarily by pillaging the local inhabitants, and that he should not
turn the forces of the state into a private army by going outside the limits

49 See Bauman 1967 (F 16) 68-87. % Cic. Pis. 50.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

580 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

assigned to his command by the Senate. Within those very broad
boundaries, he had the freedom that was essential to any commander to
exercise the power of the Senate and people of Rome as he saw fit: that
indeed was what imperium meant.

III. THE GOVERNOR AT WORK

It was through the sending of Roman armies to areas outside Italy that
the overseas provinciae came into existence, and their gradual transforma-
tion into a territorial empire was the result of such commands becoming
permanent in certain parts of the Mediterranean world. It was through
the acquisition of various responsibilities, which grew from the presence
of Roman forces and their commander there, that the institutions which
might be described as ‘provincial administration’ began to appear. To
see how this happened, it is easiest to examine the activities of the men
who went out to the provinces of the empire in the middle of the first
century B.c., and the resources which were available to them.

1. The governor and his staff

The personnel who were present with the governor can be divided into
three groups, on the basis of the manner in which they were chosen.
First, some of the governor’s staff were assigned to him by the Senate.
Of these, the quaestor was exceptional in being himself a magistrate of
the Roman people, and holding office by virtue of his election.
Consequently, like other executive magistrates, he needed a provincia in
which to function, and at least in the late second and first centuries, such
provinciae were usually distributed by lot, following a decree of the
Senate, although, as with the other magistracies, it could also be done
through a direct senatorial decree.5! The main responsibilities of the
quaestor were financial, and he had to account to the treasury at Rome at
the end of his period of office for the monies he had received and the
expenditure he had made. After the passing of the Lex Julia de
repetundis in 59 he was required to leave copies of his accounts in the
two main cities of the provincia.*2 Cicero criticizes Verres for the jejune
accounts he submitted after his period as quaestor with Cn. Carbo,
during the latter’s consulship in 84.59 They were no doubt quite
unsatisfactory as a representation of the movement of the funds for
which Verres was responsible, but they do show the extent of the task
which a quaestor undertook. Verres records payments for the wages and

5! Ulpian, D.1.13.1.2, dates the usual pattern to 138 or 137 B.c. though undoubtedly the lot was
used earlier.
52 Cic. Fam. v.20.2. 33 Cic. 1 Verr. 1.36.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE GOVERNOR AT WORK 581

provisioning of the consul’s army, as well as the expenses of his staff.
This was a major undertaking for a man at the outset of his political
career, which no doubt partly accounts for the almost paternal relation-
ship which was supposed to exist between a senior magistrate or pro-
magistrate and the quaestor attached to him.5+ No doubt the quaestor
would to a great extent depend upon the financial expertise of his own
staff of apparitores, who will be further discussed below, together with
the similar officials attached to the governor himself.

In addition to the quaestor, the governor also took with him a number
of senior men, usually of senatorial rank, as /egati. These were also
assigned to him by the Senate, though there is considerable evidence to
show that the governor was consulted about who were to be his legates,
and often he would take members of his own family and other friends
and associates.55 Cicero in 51 included his brother, Q. Cicero, among his
legati, as well as C. Pomptinus, M. Anneius and a certain L. Tullius. Of
these all but the last are known to have been men of military reputation,
and certainly all four were used by Cicero in military capacities.56 This
indeed would seem to be the main function of the /egati, and their
position and authority derived entirely from that of the governor
himself.

The other people accompanying the governor were not allotted to
him by the Senate in the way that the quaestor and the /egati were. He had
for instance a number of apparitores. This is really a general term for a
varied group of individuals who performed functions directly related to
the work of the magistrates and promagistrates to whom they were
assigned.5’7 In Rome such men were organized into colleges, known as
decuriae, which by the time of Augustus had a structure and hierarchy of
considerable complexity, and already in the Republic had an official
position and certain privileges.58 Among them were the lictors and other
attendants on the magistrates, and also the scribae, who served the
quaestors by keeping accounts and other records. Although there is no
epigraphic record of scribae attached to the consuls or praetors, they are
found on the staff of provincial governors, and Cicero had with him in
Cilicia a scriba named Tullius, who was probably a freedman from his
own household. This example suggests that, although in the early
Empire the scribae of the quaestors were assigned by lot, it was possible in
the late Republic for governors to select the men they wanted; this is
confirmed by a scathing account by Cicero of the scriba who served

54 Cf. the relationship between M. Antonius and C. Norbanus in ¢. 95 B.c., Cic. De Or. 11.198.

55 On the /egati, see Schleussner 1978 (A 106) 101-240.

56 Cic. Fam. xv.q.8.

57 See in general A. H. M. Jones 1949 (G 130) and Purcell 1983 (G 199).

58 As in the Lex Cornelia de xx quaestoribus (FIRA 1? no. 10).
5° Purcell 1983 (G 199) 128; Cic. Fam. v.20.1, with Shackleton Bailey’s note 1977 (B 110).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

582 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

Verres as legate, praetor and propraetor.© Such men were important
because they did belong to what was in some sense a professional body,
but it is clear that even they had no specialist knowledge of the areas to
which they went when on the staff of a provincial governor or his
quaestor, but went out from Rome, just as did the other members of the
goveror’s staff. They probably differed from the rest of the entourage in
being of a lower social class, since although scribae could be of equestrian
status, they were not likely to be members of that part of the eguites which
was closest to the senatorial order, and from which senators were
drawn.°!

The other group chosen by the governor without reference to the
Senate was the cohors amicorum, a collection of associates of the governor,
who had no official status at all, but received allowances from the Senate
for their expenses while in the provincia. They not only gained valuable
experience for themselves and enjoyed the opportunities of foreign
travel, but also performed an important function, in that they acted,
together with the quaestor and the /ega#z, as the governor’s consilinm. It
was a part of the normal functioning of any Roman official, especially in
the juridical sphere, for decisions to be taken only after consultation with
others, even in cases where there was no doubt that the person making
the decision himself had the necessary authority to decide.® Cicero
accuses Verres of ‘hearing a charge when there was no accuser, reaching
a verdict without a consilium, pronouncing condemnation without
hearing a defence’,®> which illustrates the moral necessity of such
consultation for the proper conduct of affairs. Even the consuls in Rome,
hearing a dispute between the inhabitants of the Boeotian town of
Oropus and representatives of a group of publicani about the status of a
piece of sacred land, consulted a consilium before recommending the form
of senatorial decree that should be issued. Similarly Cn. Pompeius
Strabo, giving citizenship to a group of Spanish cavalrymen while on
campaign as consul in Picenum in 89, lists his consilinm.®4 Such lists reveal
that these consilia included men of very different ages, several of whom
had close connexions with the magistrate or promagistrate involved.
Pompeius for instance included his son, who was of course the great
Pompey, along with thirty-two other young men and twenty-two of
higher status. The number of members of this consilinm may have been
unusually large, but such a pattern confirms the indications in the
sources of the composition of the group of friends (comites or amici) who
accompanied a provincial governor. The poet Catullus, for instance,

60 Pliny Ep. 4.12; Cie. 1 Verr. 3.187.

61 On equestrian seribae in the imperial period, see E. Kornemann, RE 11a 853.62.
62 J. Crook, Consilium Principis (Cambridge, 1955) ch. 1.

6 Cic. um Verr. 5.23. 4 FIRA 1. no, 36 (Oropus); ILS 8888 (Pompeius).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE GOVERNOR AT WORK 583

almost certainly still in his twenties at the time, went out to Bithynia in 57
with C. Memmius, who had held the praetorship in the previous year.

The amici, along with the quaestor and the /egati, were given
allowances by the aerarium for their living expenses, and this sum was
included in the monies paid over to the quaestor at the beginning of his
period of office. Cicero’s entourage clearly expected him to divide
between them the million sesterces of surplus that he had left from this
amount at the end of his time in Cilicia, but, as he explains in his letter to
Atticus, not only was this against his conscience, but he had to account
for the money to the treasury.© The sums involved could be large, both
for these allowances and for the money given to the governor himself for
his own use, called vasarium. Cicero claims that L. Piso took 18 million
sesterces as his vasarium when he was appointed to Macedonia as
proconsul in 58 (a sum equivalent to a very substantial private fortune),
and that he left it on interest in Rome.6? Whether or not this is true, it
does seem that the vasarium, unlike the other allowances, was not

accounted for by the governor at the end of his tenure.

* One other arrangement made by the Senate for the provisioning of the
governor and his staff is known in some detail. Before he left for his
provincia, the governor was given an amount of money for the purchase
of grain for himself and those on his staff, and a price was fixed by the
Senate at which this grain was to be bought. He could then compel
farmers there to sell that quantity of grain (known as frumentum in cellam
or frumentum aestumatum) to him at that fixed price. Although this scheme
was no doubt instituted to protect the representatives of the Roman
people from exploitation by the provincials, it was, like all attempts to fix
a price other than the ordinary sale-price for a commodity, open to
abuse. If the fixed price was higher than the current price, the governor
could pocket the difference, while if it was lower, farmers might try to
bribe him to buy the grain from someone other than themselves. Even if
the fixed price and the current price were at about the same level, an
unscrupulous governor might require the delivery of the grain to some
distant part of the provincia at the expense of the farmer, and thus put
pressure on him to bribe his way out of the situation. Cicero certainly
accused Verres of all these manoeuvres, and he was by no means the first
to have tried this sort of extortion.

In addition to these groups of people round the governor, whose

65 Catullus 10 and 28. See further Marquardt and Wissowa 1831-5 (A 69) 17 531-3.

66 Cic. Aft. vii.1.6.

67 Cic. Pis. 86. Compare the fortune of the younger Pliny, probably about 16 million sesterces (R.
Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (2nd edn, Cambridge 1982) ch. 1).

68 Cic. u Verr. 3.188 ff. Similar problems had been encountered in Spain before 171 (Livy
XLUI,2.12), and were still to be found in Britain when Agricola arrived there in a.p. 78 (Tac. Agr.
19.4).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

584 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

presence was officially recognized, at least to the extent that financial
provision was made by the treasury at Rome for their food, there were
also people attached directly to the household of the governor. Cicero’s
brother, Quintus, when governor of Asia from 61 to 58 after his
praetorship, had with him his slave Statius, whom he manumitted
during his tenure of the provincia, despite Cicero’s advice. This man
evidently had great influence with Quintus, so much so that Cicero
actually reprimanded his brother for listening to him more than was
proper, and complained that he had been asked by several people to write
letters of recommendation for them to Statius.® It was inevitable that a
governor, with comparatively little administrative assistance, should
turn to those who undertook similar tasks for him in the management of
his own domestic affairs, but it is not surprising to discover that this
often caused comment and resentment.

2. The publicani

Besides the governor and his staff, one other set of people in the provincia
acting on behalf of the Roman people were the representatives of the
societates publicanorum.” These institutions, made up of a number of
stockholders, and in many ways similar to modern joint-stock compa-
nies, undertook work for the Republic which required any major capital
investment. This included the building of the Roman aqueducts, the
supplying of the army and the collection of certain taxes and dues. It is
particularly in this latter connexion that the governor was most likely to
have dealings with them, though it must be remembered that, if he was in
a provincia which involved a great deal of military activity, their supply
function might also bring him into contact with them.

Two forms of taxation in particular were entrusted to the publicani.
Throughout the empire customs dues were collected by them, and in
those eastern provinces which paid a tithe of their agricultural produce,
that too was gathered by the societates. More will be said below about
Roman fiscal practice, but certain consequences of the presence of the
publicani are of more general significance in understanding the work of
the governor.

Because the contracts for the collection of taxes were made between
the censors in Rome and the publican company which made the most
successful tender on a five-year basis, the representatives of the company
would be in the provincia for at least five years at a time. This is no doubt
part of the reason for the use of the funds of the publicani as a local bank,

69 Cic. Aft. 1.19.1; OFr. 1.2.1-3.

70 On the publicani, see Badian 1972 (a 4) esp. ch. 4; Nicolet (G 175), esp. pp. 70-82, and in ch. 16
below, pp. 635-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TAXATION 585

on which the governor could draw. Verres, for instance, was authorized
to draw money for the purchase of grain from the publicani in Sicily.”!
Such an arrangement is perhaps not surprising in that the money that
they had collected was the tax which in any case belonged to the Roman
people. It may also be that a governor on leaving his provincia sometimes
left any surplus money in their possession, and, if this was so, it illustrates
the superiority of the facilities available to the publicani for the care of
large amounts of coinage.”? In other respects also they were certainly
better served. Cicero mentions the sabellarti of the publicani who seem to
have operated a regular service, carrying letters from Cilicia to Rome,
which he himself used for some of his correspondence.’3 Otherwise he
used friends or slaves of his own as couriers, since there was no provision
of this kind by the state.

The role of the pablicani in a particular area varied a great deal,
depending on the form of taxation that was employed there, and the
nature of the provincial communities. The size and importance of the
societates would itself vary, as it would appear that in principle a new
grouping was formed for each state contract. The larger societates,
including those which collected taxes, had certain legal privileges,
including the recognition of a corporate existence which, unlike that of
purely private commercial associations, survived the death of individual
members of the group. No doubt there was in fact a degree of continuity
among partners from contract to contract, but these companies were
privately owned, and not a centrally organized bureaucracy. The use to
which a particular governor put the services of the publicani in his
provincia would be bound to depend upon the particular people who were
there, and on his relations with them. Inevitably this put him under
considerable pressure not to offend them. When Cicero wrote to his
brother Quintus about the governing of Quintus’ provincia of Asia in 60
or 59, he stressed the difficulties of dealing with the pablicani, and
although the problems to which he was referring were mainly political,
the dependence of the governor upon the societates for assistance in the
day-to-day matters of administration cannot have made the position
easier.

IV. TAXATION

Of the non-military occupations of a provincial governor in the first
century B.C., two were of particular importance. These were the

™ Cic. 1 Verr, 3.165f.
72 Cicero states that he intended to take sureties at Laodicea for all the public money in his

possession (Fa, 11.17.4). Badian 1972 (A 4) 77-8, takes this as a reference to security for a deposit
made with the pablicani, though Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110) believes it to be insurance against
loss in transit. 3 Cic. Att. v.15.3, V.16.1. 74 Cic. OFr. 1.1.32-3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

586 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

responsibility, either direct or indirect, for the collection of the various
taxes payable within his area, and the exercise of jurisdiction.

Taxation took a wide variety of forms throughout the empire. Cicero,
in a famous passage in the Verrines,”> explains that there were two forms
of tax in the provinciae: a fixed amount, called stipendium; and those taxes
which were dealt with by the censors at Rome. The first kind he describes
as having been imposed as the price of victory on the defeated, and
instances the Spaniards and the majority of the Carthaginians as paying
it; while in the second category he mentions the tithe in Asia, which was
arranged by a law of C. Gracchus. He then adds a third sort, different
from either of the others, the tithe on grain, as practised in Sicily, which
like the Asian tax, was a variable amount, but the collection of which was
left in the hands of Sicilian rather than Roman tax-collectors.

Cicero distinguishes between different taxes on the basis of the
methods used to collect them, but in fact the different types of taxation
also had quite different origins. The stipendium at an early stage had two
forms, which both contributed elements to make up the pattern of the
‘fixed tax’ to which Cicero refers. Large-scale reparations were exacted
from, for instance, the Carthaginians after the First and Second Punic
Wars, as a punishment and a means of redress, but these were not
taxation in the ordinary sense of the word since they were fixed amounts
which had to be paid once for all.”6 In Spain the situation was quite
different, in that there the stipendium seems originally to have been money
raised, largely from Rome’s somewhat unreliable allies, to pay the wages
of the troops stationed there.”?7 Pay for soldiers was in fact the first
meaning of the word stipendium. Both these forms of exaction, repa-
rations and army pay, eventually became regularized into fixed annual
payments. In the case of Carthage, after the destruction of the city in 146,
a head-tax and a land-tax were imposed, and it appears from an
inscription of 111 that this taxation was called stipendium. The same
inscription shows that those who paid this stipendium were entered by
name on a public register.”8 The means of collecting stipendium no doubt
varied widely from area to area. In Spain, for instance, during the
Hannibalic War, the stipendium which was levied to pay the troops was
collected from the tribal chieftains,’? and the use of local communities
must have been common. In Spain and elsewhere the Romans seem to
have introduced stipendium themselves, but in some places it was
developed from taxes taken over from previous regimes. When L.

Cie. Verr. 3.12.

Livy Xx1.1.5, 40.5, 41.9; XXX.37.5; XXXIL.2.1; XXXI11.46.8-9; XXXVI.4.7.
See Richardson 1976 (E 24) 147-9.

78 App. Pun. 135.641; lex agr. (FIRA 1? no. 8) lines 77-82.

79 Livy xxvitt.2§.6ff, 34.11.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

TAXATION 587

Aemilius Paullus reorganized Macedonia after the battle of Pydna in 168,
he instituted a stipendium which was half that paid to the kings, and this
certainly suggests that the form’ of tax was modelled on that already in
force.80

This tendency of the Romans to base their taxation in the empire on
what they found when they arrived is even more noticeable in the case of
those taxes which were levied by others on behalf of the state, following
an auction of the right to collect, held every five years by the censors in
Rome, or, as happened with the Sicilian tithe, annually by the gover-
nor.8! In such cases also the provincial cities played a large part. Whereas
with the fixed st/pendium the money appears to have been paid directly to
the Roman officials in the provincia, these taxes (in Cicero’s second and
third categories), which were all percentage levies of various types, were
collected by publicani based in Rome (or in the case of Sicily, by Sicilians).
The exact amount that such taxes would raise could not be estimated
precisely, and that is no doubt part of the reason why such taxes were
sold off to private collectors, who in effeet underwrote the revenue to be
gained by the censors. The pub/icani had bought by auction the right to
levy the amounts due, and usually made their own agreements with the
local cities about the collection at local level. Frequently the form of
taxation was the same as had existed previously, as for instance with the
Sicilian tithe. Another form of taxation found in Sicily and elsewhere
was the scriptura. This was based on the number of grazing animals
owned, and appears to have been a complement to tithes on grain. It was
also collected by publicant.

A similar adaptation of previous patterns can be seen in the customs
dues (portoria), which were also collected by publicani, and were based on
those previously in force in the various parts of the Mediterranean in
which the Romans had now established provinciae. This can be seen from
the fact that the customs boundaries were not identical with the
boundaries of the provinciae, and indeed it was a matter of dispute
between merchants and publicani whether a cargo landing twice within
one provincial area had to pay portorium once or twice.82

This variety and lack of overall system suggests that the Romans did
not see their empire as a fiscal unit. They were no doubt keen to extract as
much money as came readily to hand, and one of the arguments which
Cicero used to urge the sending of Pompey to the East in 67 was the
importance of the revenues from the provinces there, especially from
Asia.§3 It is also true that the taxation which the Romans took from the
East was immensely important for the patterns of trade and of the

80 Livy xLv.2z9.4. Macedonia was not a permanent provincia at this time.
8! See Carcopino 1914 (G 34), 77-107.
82 S. De Laet 1949 (G 141) esp. ch. 5. 83 Cic. Leg. Man. 6.14-16.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

588 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

economy in the whole Mediterranean region.®* This does not show,
however, that the Romans achieved this effect intentionally, nor even
that they established themselves in various areas because they could gain
substantial revenues from them. Cicero, in the passage just cited, states
that Asia was the only provincia which did more than pay for the cost of
defending it, and although this may well have been an exaggeration to
win an argument in the assembly, it must have seemed credible to at least
some of his hearers. On the other hand there was undoubtedly an income
to the state from taxation, which grew as the empire itself grew,
especially after Pompey’s conquest and reorganization of the East.
Through the last century of the Republic, in the same period in which the
provincia was beginning to be seen as a province in the modern sense, this
seems to have become a larger part of the Roman understanding of the
benefits of their empire.

It is also important to realize that the taxes described so far did not
exhaust the financial demands which provincial communities might be
expected to meet. The costs of billeting Roman forces might well be
high, and it is significant that this was limited by the Lex Julia de
repetundis in 59; before that law, exemption from such expenses had
been a reward to especially favoured allies. Other semi-official demands
came from senators and magistrates in Rome. In his consulship in 63,
Cicero attempted to abolish the practice of senators being voted the right
to go to provinces on private business, and succeeded in restricting the
time allowed for such ‘embassies’ (/:berae legationes) to one year. This limit
was probably repeated in the Lex Julia. Cicero also commended his
brother Quintus for forbidding the voting by provincial communities in
Asia of contributions to the aediles’ games in Rome (vectigal aedilicium),
much to the anger of certain members of the Roman establishment.® In
addition, governors might demand payments, allegedly on a voluntary
basis, as a mark of favour from the cities in their provincia: this too was
restricted by the Lex Julia.86 Finally we must take into account the
wholly illegal sums extorted by the governors and their staff and by the
publicani. Cicero’s accusations against Verres may be exaggerated, but
there is no doubt that such extortion occurred. A provincial governor-
ship was part of a political career, and political careers in the late
Republic were expensive. In 53 the Senate passed a decree which
required a five-year interval between the holding of a magistracy and
being assigned to a provincia.8? The reason for this, and for Pompey’s law
of the following year which contained the same provision, was the

84 Crawford 1977 (G 46); Hopkins 1980 (G 124); Nicolet in ch. 16 below, esp. pp. 637-0.

85 Liberae legationes: Cic. Leg. 11.5, Att, xv.11.4. Vectigal aedilicium: Cic. OFr. 1.1.26.

86 On the Lex Julia, see Cic. Pis. 90. For freedom from billeting as a reward, see the Lex Antonia
de Termessibus (FIRA 1? no. 11) col. 1. lines 6-17. 87 Dio x1.46.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

JURISDICTION 589

extraordinarily large amounts of money being spent on electoral bribery
in the late 50s, in the expectation that a spell in a rich provincia would
make it possible to recoup the loss without delay.

V. JURISDICTION

In many provinciae the greater part of the governor’s time was probably
taken up with the law courts. This is somewhat surprising, since the law
whicha Roman magistrate was empowered to enforce was the Roman ins
civile, and this, as its name implies, provided rights and remedies for
Roman citizens; but if he had dealt only with cases involving Roman
citizens, the governor would have had much less to do than we know
was in fact the case.88 When it came to non-citizens (the bulk of the

provincial population) a Roman governor could, within certain limits,
make his own arrangements.

It is by no means clear what the legal basis of that part of the
governor’s jurisdiction was. It has mostly been believed that there was
for each area a special statute, the /ex provinciae, which determined the
extent of the governor’s powers, including his jurisdiction.® It is true
that in some provinciae there was some measure of this kind in existence,
usually called a /ex, though probably not passed by the assemblies in
Rome, but rather a decree of a commander (sometimes advised by a
group of ten senators), subsequently ratified by the Senate. In Sicily, the
Lex Rupilia specified the circumstances in which the governor could
hear cases which were brought to him by non-Roman inhabitants of his
area. Many provinciae, however, give no indication of ever having hada
lex provinciae, and even in the case of Sicily the Lex Rupilia dates only
from 132, when the consul P. Rupilius put an end to the slave-wars
which had been ravaging the island. There must have been cases brought
to the governor before 132, and there is no reason to believe that he was
unable to hear them because of the lack of a /ex provinciae. Indeed such
leges were probably imposed, not to enable the governor to exercise
jurisdiction, but to limit the types of cases he could hear, and thus to
prevent provincials from bringing him into too many of their local
disputes. As can be seen from the case of Verres, a skilful use of the
power to assign judges or to hear cases could give a governor great
power over those in his provincia.

The /ex provinciae (if such existed for his area) might therefore limit a
governor’s scope. By the first century he was also limited by his own
statement of intent, issued in the form of an edict at the beginning of his

88 For the judicial activity of governors, see Marshall 1966 (F 109).
89 Stevenson 1939 (F 149) 68 and 82—4; Hoyos 1973 (F 79)-
% Cic. 1 Verr. 2.32; Mellano 1977 (F 116).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

590 I§. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

tenure, which gave the grounds for such actions as he was prepared to
hear. This was inevitably modelled on the edict of the urban praetor in
Rome, and thus related to the basic forms of the éws civile, but the precise
shape could be varied by each incoming governor.®! Cicero added to that
of his predecessor, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and he also drew substan-
tially from the edict of Q. Mucius Scaevola, promulgated when the latter
was governor of Asia in the 90s, which was regarded as a classic of the
form.”

Something of the practice of a governor in a western provincia at the
beginning of the first century can be seen in an inscription recently
discovered in northern Spain. This records the settlement of a water
dispute between two Spanish communities, on the judgement of a third
community. The court was set up by the governor of Hispania Citerior
in 87, and, despite the fact that neither of the parties to the matter nor the
judges are Roman, the whole case is set out with considerable sophistica-
tion in the language of the formulae used in the court of the urban
praetor. Such phrases as ‘si parret ... si non parret ...” and such
concepts as the use of a fiction in the presentation of a case were the
everyday practice of the legal profession in Rome, but can have meant
little to the inhabitants of the Ebro valley. The governor has used the
forms of the éus civile, not because he was required to do so, but because
this was the natural way for a man schooled in the patterns of Roman law
to express the essence of a case brought to him. Indeed the main
difference between the position of a magistrate in the courts in Rome and
a governor in his provincia was precisely that the latter was not in Rome,
and therefore not under the eye of other lawyers. Cicero remarks to his
brother Quintus that not much in the way of knowledge is needed for
cases in the provinciae, just consistency and firmness, so as to resist the
suspicion of partiality.

Such cases could take up a great deal of time, especially once an area
had been organized into districts (called conventus) for the purposes of
jurisdiction. It was then necessary for a governor to travel round his
provincia to hear cases in those areas. He could to some extent delegate
this responsibility to others on his staff, in particular his quaestor and
legates; and in Sicily, which was unusual in having two quaestors
assigned to it, one, based at Lilybaeum in the extreme west of the island,
spent most of his time exercising jurisdiction. However, as has been
seen, the juridical authority of the governor was vested toa considerable
extent in his own person, rather than in any systematic body of

1 On the provincial edict, see Greenidge 1901 (F 68) 119—29 and Marshall 1964 (F 108).
92 Cic. Faar, 11.8.4; Alt. VI.1.5.

%3 Richardson 1983 (B 227); Birks, Rodger and Richardson 1984 (B 133).

Cic. OFr. 1.1.20.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE PROVINCIAE AND THE PROVINCIALS 591

provincial law, so that it is not surprising that much the greater part of
the work was done by the governor himself.° By the time of Augustus,
the governor of Tarraconensis in northern and eastern Spain spent the
whole of the winter with such cases, and even Caesar, in the midst of his
campaigns in Gaul, crossed the Alps at the end of each campaigning
season, in order to hear cases in Illyricum and Cisalpine Gaul.%

It is not difficult to see why such calls on the governor arose. Demands
for jurisdiction were made of the Senate by peoples and kings in the orbit
of Roman power throughout the second century, and in those cases
for which documentary evidence survives, they can be seen to have been
met by a similar combination of diplomacy and use of the éus civile as
appears later in the practice of the governors.*” In both instances, the
reason for the approach made by the non-Roman parties to the disputes
was the unarguable fact that Rome was the supreme power in the
Mediterranean world. If need be, Roman might could be no doubt
exercised to enforce decisions taken by a Roman official, or by a judge
appointed by such an official. It is improbable however that that was
stated explicitly as the reason for invoking Roman jurisdiction. The
mere fact of her supremacy imposed both an expectation and an
obligation which Rome was quite prepared to fulfil, whether through
the Senate or through the judicial activity of her magistrates and pro-
magistrates. Here, as in other cases, the exercise of such authority led
inevitably to its extension.

VI. THE PROVINCIAE AND THE PROVINCIALS

Just as the provincia was not at first seen as a territorial or administrative
unit, so too the inhabitants of the provinciae were not regarded as a single
category. From the legal point of view, such people were either Roman
citizens (cives) or non-citizens (peregrini), and remained so whether they
were within the area of a provincia or not. At the level of international
relations, the latter might be described as being allies, or ‘within the
control, under the sway, in the power or within the friendship of the
Roman people, and again such status did not depend upon the
existence or otherwise of a provincia. The same irregular pattern can be
seen in the variations of status given to communities. It has been asserted
that such communities which did not hold the Roman citizenship were
either states with a treaty (civitates foederatae) or free states (civitates liberae)
or else states ‘paying the stipendium’ i.e. regular taxation to Rome,

95 Greenidge 1901 (F 68) 129-32; Marshall 1966 (F 109) 231.

% Tarraconesis: Strab. 111.4.20. Caesar: Caes. BGall. 1.54.3; V.1.§; V.2.15 VI.44.3.

” E.g. the arbitration between Magnesia and Priene (FIR.A 111 no. 162). See above n. 16.
% Lex rep. (FIRA 1? no, 7) line 1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

592 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

(civitates stipendiariae).° This is true in the sense that each of these types of
community might exist within the bounds of any provincia, but is
misleading if it suggests that such a division was part of a provincial
system. All these variations of status existed both within and outside the
permanent provinciae, particularly in Greece, and belong not to a system
of provincial administration, but of diplomatic relations between
states, 100

That is not to say that the status of a particular community did not
affect the way a governor dealt with it. If a city had some form of
guarantee that it could use and observe its own laws, interference with its
legal or political activities by a governor might well bring objections
from its citizens, and such cities were likely to have friends in the Senate
at Rome. Moreover, certain protection against interference with the
affairs of civitates liberae was given by senatorial decree and by Caesar’s
Lex Iulia de repetundis in 59.!°' In the ordinary course of events,
however, both these specially privileged communities and others with-
out such privileges were able to conduct their own affairs. The
governor’s tasks, military, juridical and fiscal, usually meant that he
treated the communities within his provincia as self-governing entities,
which indeed they were.

The position of individuals within the empire, and their relations with
the governor were, like those of the communities, largely dependent
upon their own connexions with Rome. There were a number of Roman
citizens living outside Italy by the late Republic, some on the staff of the
societates publicanorum, some engaged in various forms of business, some,
like Cicero’s correspondent, M’. Curius, combining commercial activity
with a desire to keep away from Rome in the difficult and dangerous
period of the war between Caesar and Pompey.' In addition there were
individuals from among the native population who had been granted
citizenship for services to Rome, such as the band of Spanish cavalrymen
enfranchised by Cn. Pompeius Strabo in 89.!°3 Such people obviously
had to be handled with care, not only because of their legal rights as
citizens, but because of their contacts with men of influence in Rome.
The same was true of some non-Roman provincials. The trial of Verres
took place partly because one of the people Verres had harmed as
governor of Sicily was a certain Sthenius of Thermae, who included
among his Roman patrons past and present both Marius and Pompey.
The correspondence of Cicero includes a number of letters commending
individual provincials and whole communities to the attention of

% E.g. Stevenson 1939 (F 149) 81-2.

100 For the origins of these terms, see Sherwin-White 1973 (F 141) ch. 6.

101 Cic. Prov. Cons. 7.

102 Cic. Fam. vit.28-31. In general, see Wilson 1966 (A 128). 103 ILS 8888.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

A CHANGE IN PERCEPTIONS 593

Roman governors and other officials overseas. As Roman power grew
throughout the Mediterranean, so the links between important Romans
and those who held positions of power and responsibility within the
cities and communities of the rest of the ancient world became closer and
more complex.

VII. PROVINCIAE, PROVINCES AND EMPIRE: THE BEGINNINGS
OF A CHANGE IN PERCEPTIONS

The provincia at the beginning of the second century was still fundamen-
tally part of the system of military magistracies which was the basis of the
Roman constitution, and this background does much to explain the
apparent limitation of ‘provincial administration’ as it is found in the last
two centuries B.C.

For the governor of an overseas provincia the time spent away from
Rome was an essential but not always welcome part of a political career.
He had reached that position by election to a magistracy, and, as soon as
he returned to Rome, he was involved once again in the political life of
the city. Although Cicero’s appointment to take charge of Cilicia was not
typical, and came much later in his career than was usual, his complaints
about his absence from Rome are likely to have been echoed by others.
He writes to his correspondent, Caelius Rufus, from a military encamp-
ment within his provincia: “The city, the city, my dear Rufus! Hold fast to
it and live in its light! All service abroad, as I decided from my youth, is
mean and sordid for anyone who can make a name for himself by
working in Rome.”!%

Such an attitude is hardly surprising, given the lack of interest shown
by the political establishment at Rome in what was going on in the rest of
the empire. In a speech delivered some three years before he himself went
out to Cilicia, Cicero complained that there was so much going on in the
capital that no one knew what was happening overseas, and illustrated
this with an amusing story about his own return as a young man froma
period of service as quaestor at Lilybaeum in Sicily. He had been full of
his achievements while in the island, and was piqued to discover that the
first person he met did not even know where he had been.!%

It was inevitable, when there was such a lack of interest in the events in
the overseas provinciae and while the link between the position of
governor and the city magistracies was so strong, that the welfare of the
provincials would not be uppermost in the minds of those sent out from

104 Sthenius: Cic. 1 Verr. 2.113. Examples of Cicero’s commendations: individual provincials —
Fam. xt1t,19; X11.20; XI11.2§; XII1.26; XII1.37; Communities — x111.38a (Lacedaemonians); x111.48
(Paphians on Cyprus).

108 Cic. Fam, 1.12.2. 106 Cic. Plane. 64-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

594 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

Rome. Cicero says that Verres boasted openly that he did not intend to
keep all the profits of his time in Sicily for himself, but that he had
divided his period into three, one for himself, one for his patrons and
those who would defend him at his trial, and one (the most lucrative
third) for bribing the jury.!°? Not all Roman officials will have been as
predatory as Cicero represents Verres as being, but the Greek historian,
Appian, writing about events in the second century B.c. with the
hindsight of some 300 years, comments that there were some who
sought from their governorships reputation, gain or the glory of a
triumph, but not the advantage of the Roman state.!08 The emphasis on
individual attainment that was so much part of the creed of the Roman
noble meant that such attitudes were not at all unusual.

This in turn explains why provincial governors in the first century
found themselves open to pressures of various kinds from people, both
in Rome and the provinces, who might be of importance to their political
advancement. As is well known, Cicero had to cope not only with
demands from his friend Caelius Rufus, who was aedile while Cicero was
in Cilicia, for panthers for his aedilician games, but also a request for
military support from an agent of M. Brutus, to enable him to collect a
debt owed by the local senate of the city of Salamis on Cyprus.!© Further
investigation revealed to Cicero that the circumstances of the loan itself
were irregular, to say nothing of the proposed method of securing its
repayment. In addition to approaches from the city of Rome itself,
powerful publicani and important personages in the province might well
have an effect on the governor’s subsequent career that left him exposed
to the possibility of undue influence from such sources. Cicero admitted
that Verres was far from unique in his misbehaviour in his provincia; the
unusual thing about him, according to his accuser, was that he was
already corrupt before he went.!!0

Because the provinces of the Roman empire grew out of the provinciae
of magistrates and pro-magistrates, what we call ‘provincial administ-
ration’ was still by Cicero’s time virtually identical with what the
governor did. For this reason, and because what the governor did was
determined in part by the particular situation in his area, there was little
consistency between one provincia and another. The only general
guidelines which applied to all provinciae were to be found in such laws as
Sulla’s Lex Cornelia de maiestate and Caesar’s Lex Julia de repetundis.
These laws were not sets of instructions on administration, emanating
from some Roman equivalent of the Colonial Office, but parts of the
criminal law, specifying criminal charges which could be brought

107 Cie. 1 Verr. go. 108 App. Hisp. 80.349.

109 Panthers: Cic. Fam. viit.g.§, Vilt.g.3, VIN.8.10, viit.6.5, tt.t1.2. Brutus: Cic. Aft. v.21.10-13,
VIL1.37-7. "0 Cic. m Verr. 2.39.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

A CHANGE IN PERCEPTIONS 595

against individual holders of imperium. Moreover in the event of a charge
being brought under such a law, the accusation came from a private
individual, as in all Roman criminal law. The state as such was not
involved with the implementation of these safeguards. The whole
business of provincial administration was apparently the responsibility
of the individual governor, and checks were placed upon him by means
of the due process of law.

This might lead to the conclusion that even by the late Republic, the
empire did not exist at all in the Roman mind, other than as a series of
separate military commands. Such a conclusion, though it contains part
of the truth, does not take account of the changes in attitude to the
empire which took place during the last two centuries B.c., and which
began to transform the provinciae into the provinces of an empire. The
feeling that the well-being of the provincials was the responsibility of the
governor received perhaps its finest expression in Virgil’s famous lines:
‘Remember, Roman, that your skill is to rule the nations through your
power (¢mperium), to give a settled order to peace, to spare the conquered
and in war to defeat the proud.’!!!

No doubt the poet of Augustan Rome wished to give the impression
that, despite the horrors of the civil wars, the destiny of the Roman
people was a noble one, but similar views can be found from the
Republican period also. Cicero’s letter to his brother Quintus, which is a
tract on how a provincial governor should behave, includes this
summary of what Quintus’ attitude should be, after two years in the
province of Asia: ‘Put all your heart and mind to that line of thought you
have followed so far, that you love those whom the Senate and people of
Rome have committed to your trust and authority, and protect them and
desire their greatest happiness.’!!2

Obviously both these authors are presenting an idealized picture of
relations between Rome and the inhabitants of the provinces, but it is
notable that such an ideal has at its centre a sense of responsibility that is
almost paternalistic in nature. The same feeling can be found in the
complaints heard from time to time in the late Republic of the bad
behaviour of provincial governors. Those individuals who were accused
by Cicero before the quaestio de repetundis should not be taken as typical,
and in any case the accounts which Cicero gives of them are clearly not
without bias. However, when addressing the people on the subject of the
Lex Manilia, which was to give the command against Mithridates to
Pompey in 66, he states that it is hard to describe how much the Romans
are hated by foreign nations because of the lust and injustice of those men
who have been sent out to them as holders of imperinm.'!3 Once again

SL Virgil Aen. v1.85 1-3. "2 Cic. OFr. 1.1.27. M3 Cic. Leg. Man. 65.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

596 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

there is a clear presupposition that the proper relationship is one of just
and responsible government.

This blend of paternalism and self-interest is seen with particular
clarity in the letters which Cicero wrote from Cilicia during his year there
from July 51. Despite his frequent assertions of his dislike of his task, not
only to his friends Caelius and Atticus, but also to Appius Claudius
Pulcher,'!4 whom he succeeded as governor, he was aware of the
responsibilities that his position gave him, and to some extent at least
seems to have enjoyed them. He wrote to Atticus, after his victory overa
stronghold belonging to the perpetually troublesome mountain peoples
on the boundary between Cilicia and Syria, that nothing in his whole life
had given him so much pleasure as the integrity which his governorship
had called upon him to display. His military skill, his handling of the
delicate and unstable situation in the allied kingdoms on his frontiers,
and above all the self-conscious rectitude of his dealings with the
inhabitants of his own area clearly gave hima delight which went beyond
the acquisition of a good reputation.!!5 Moreover, he was able to claim
that his scrupulousness, which extended not only to refusing even those
allowances from the provincials which were permitted by law, but
insisting that his entourage did the same, had brought positive benefits
to the Romans at a critical moment. When war threatened from the
Parthians in Syria, he could report to Cato in Rome that his moderation
had secured the support of the provincial communities.!'6

It is almost impossible to discover what the provincials actually felt
about the Roman presence. Cicero lamented the miserable state of Cilicia
when he arrived there, and attributed the problems of the people to the
ravages of Appius Claudius, yet at least some cities would have sent
embassies to Rome commending Appius’ governorship, and it is
possible that one was intending to erect a temple in his honour.!!?
Between Cicero’s complaints and the public honours decreed by the
Cilicians themselves, it is hard to know how far the provincials felt they
had benefited from Appius’ proconsulship and how far convention and
subservience combined to ensure that genuine resentments were hidden
by a parade of official gratitude. Even in Cicero’s own account of what he
clearly intended to be an exemplary tenure of his provincia, there are
indications that Roman attitudes irritated and offended the Greeks. Even
before his arrival in his own area, he writes to Atticus that the behaviour
of his staff while in Athens, their daily rudeness, stupidity and arrogance
in word and deed, considerably upset Cicero himself.!!8 Equally,

‘4 Caelius: see above n. ros. Atticus: Aft. v.10.3. Appius Claudius: Fav. 11.2.1.

5 Aft. v.20.6. "6 Fam, XV.3.2.
"7 Cicero’s complaints: Aft. v.16. Embassies: Fam. 111.10.6. Temple(?): Fam. 111.7.2-3.
"8 Aft. v.10.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

A CHANGE IN PERCEPTIONS §97

Cicero’s well-intentioned interventions into the internal affairs of the
cities in his area, whether he was castigating the corrupt administration
of the local magistrates or ensuring that the richer citizens gave grain to
the poorer during a famine, will have displeased those who prided
themselves on their civic independence.''® In contrast to Appius, he
actively prohibited the provincials from expressing their gratitude to
him 1n other than verbal form, a move which was doubtless intended to
save the cities expense, but which also removed one of the few freedoms
which they had left under Roman control.!2° There is no doubt, from the
tone of his letters, that Cicero believed that he knew what was best for
those committed to his charge, and that he saw it as his duty to act
accordingly.

The place in Rome where the development of this attitude is perhaps
most evident is in the courts which tried cases de repetundis. Although the
system left much to be desired as a mechanism for the control of
misgovernment, it did at least exist, and could be used to prosecute
former governors. The most remarkable feature of this procedure was
that, by the time of C. Gracchus’ law at least, a court in Rome was
available in which an action could be brought by a non-Roman against a
man who had been elected to one of the highest offices of the Roman
state. In effect, the accuser was being treated for the purpose of the law as
though he were a Roman citizen. Whereas, early in the second century,
complaints of this sort could only be reported to the Senate, which could
then decide, if it so wished, to institute some form of investigation, by
the end of the century the matter could be dealt with in a court of law.
What had been a matter of foreign policy had become the business of the
courts.

Such an attitude was, of course, not merely the result of Roman good
will. It was increasingly necessary, as the empire grew, to seek the
support of at least that section of the provincial population which had
most influence locally.!21 Moreover, the acquisition of such advantages
was not without cost to the provincials themselves. In effect they ceased
to be members of foreign states with control over their own affairs in
return for a degree of paternalistic attention from the dominant power in
the Mediterranean world. Even such states as were granted the guaran-
teed use of their own laws held that right only by the grace and favour of
the Roman people.!2?

It might seem that an attitude such as that described above is
somewhat insubstantial compared with the military might of the armies

"9 Corruption: As. v1.2.5. Famine: Aft. v.21.8. 120 Alt. v.21.7.

121 Class and other divisions could result in pro- and anti-Roman factions, as at the time of
Mithridates’ conquest of western Asia Minor: see Hind in ch. 5 above, pp. 148~9.

122 E.g. Lex Antonia de Termessibus (FIRA 1? no. 11) col. 1, lines 5-10.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

598 15. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE

of Rome. Its significance, however, can scarcely be overestimated. It was
the belief of the Romans that they had some responsibility for those they
controlled which was to turn the military power of Rome into the
Roman empire, just as it turned the military provinciae into imperial
provinces. The development of the world-state that the emperors ruled
began with this change in the nature of the work of the provincial
governor during the Republican period.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 16

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.c.

C. NICOLET

If we define ‘economy’, un-theoretically, as the production, exchange
and consumption of goods (not only material goods but also what are
called ‘services’), a study of all these three elements throughout the
whole Mediterranean world, even for the period covered in this volume,
would vastly exceed the dimensions of the present chapter. Some
limitations will therefore be applied. First, a spatial limitation: we shall
look at the history mainly from the standpoint of Italy and its political
centre, Rome.! Secondly, a limitation in time: the economy of Roman
Italy already hada long history behind it in 133 B.c., but we shall take for
granted and only briefly allude to that earlier structure and development,
and lay all the stress on the changes that occurred in our period, which
were considerable and have become better known as a result of modern
research. A third limit will be in terms of orientation. It is the most
delicate point to explain, although the most interesting. One cannot
study the ancient (or any other) economy without relating it to the kind
of society and the political structure within which its developments took
place. In ancient society men were not only producers or consumers,
rentiers or wage-earners: they were also free or slave, Romans or “allies’;?
they had a social status derived not just from their place in the economy
but, mostly, from the role, hereditary or otherwise, assigned to them by
the way the community was organized. Strongly emphasized in law,
with its privileges and its exclusions, status was more civic than
economic (though naturally certain economic facts, such as property,
might be part of its definition). But status, in turn, affected the economy,
directly: the control by the state of access to real property is a good
example, or the exclusion of certain status groups — the upper ‘orders’

from certain economic activities, or the way in which the availability of
slave labour varied as a function of Rome’s conquests. So a particular
effort will be made in this chapter, in describing and analysing the facts

' The economy of the area as a whole was not yet a unity: eastern Asia Minor, Syria, Gaul and
Egypt only became integrated during the first century B.c.
2 L.e., in Italy, subjects, down at least to 89 B.C.

599

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

600 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

and changes of the Roman economy, to signal wherever appropriate the
interaction between economy and status.

One further preliminary word is necessary, on a characteristic of our
period. The century from the Gracchi to Julius Caesar was one of almost
continuous upheaval, of successive ‘crises’ or ‘revolutions’: the agrarian
crisis of 133-121, the military coups and civil wars of 103-100, 88-80, 78,
73-71, 63, 49-44, the uprising of Italy in 90-88, the slave-wars of 136,
106, 73 (and again in 47 and 36). Now in every one of these events, the
sources strongly emphasize the social dimension: ‘rich’ and ‘poor’,
‘nobles’ (sic) or ‘best people’ (optimates) against the ‘plebs’ or the ‘people’
or the ‘lower classes’. The political history, even at its most purely
narrative level, is rooted all the time (as one might, indeed, expect) in the
social and structural context. But besides that, to a greater extent than
earlier, this age of ‘revolutions’ experienced specifically economic crises:4
the crisis of food supply in Rome in 124-123 (recurring periodically at
least down to Augustus); financial crises threatening circulation and
credit in 89-88, 66-63, 48-47; crises of public finance linked to warfare
and setbacks in the march of conquest; pure coinage crises, from the
unevenness in the quantities of coinage minted to the manipulations of
the denominations and their relative value in 88, 82, 63-61, 45-44. One
can even speak of crises — or rather, perhaps, successes — in certain fields
of economic activity like the expansion of Italian viticulture or of
construction (related, inter alia, to urbanization), which archaeology has
recently cast new light on, corroborating and illustrating the literary
evidence. We shall not try to conclude from all this that the economy
played a more predominant role in our period than earlier, but the fact
that it is more in evidence and better known plainly justifies an attempt to
set down its story.

I. CONTEXT: GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY

Economies are responses to the needs of people for goods — material
goods and services. So the number of people there are, not absolutely but
relatively to the resources of a territory, is a fundamental datum. But in
dealing with antiquity the concept of a territory is more tricky than it
would be nowadays, because there was no such thing as a unitary
territorial state: ‘Roman Italy’ is, before 89 B.c., a misleading term.
Cisalpine Gaul, north of the line Pisa—Rimini, would have, formally, to

3 This is not to engage in any search for the will-o’-the-wisp of a specific ‘ancient economy’: such
interactions are not unique to any one period of history and could equally well be observed in
‘modern’ economies.

4 How far that impression may be the result merely of the hazards of source-survival is a
preliminary and basic question.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONTEXT: GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY 601

be excluded: it was a province, even after 89.5 Yet although it had, unlike
the rest of the peninsula, a partly Gallic population, it had been colonized
very early by Romans and Italians, and underwent a remarkable
demographic and economic development alongside the rest of Italy. It
was the earliest receptacle of Italian emigration. It requires, therefore, to
be considered together with the rest. On the other hand, even peninsular
Italy in the narrow sense was, down to about 90-Go B.c., only relatively
unified politically, and displays an even more marked human and
economic diversity. It was a big federation — technically an ‘alliance’ — of
some dozens of populi, themselves divided into some hundreds of more
or less autonomous ‘cities’, which were only under Roman hegemony
for military and, to a lesser degree, fiscal purposes. And the diversity of
political structures of the cities, some more and some less closely tied to
Rome, corresponds to a diversity of juridical statuses, of the cities and of
the individuals within them, which had a powerful influence on
economic relationships: this or that right of ownership of real property;
freedom or otherwise of change of domjcile; possibility or not of
economic relationships between each other or with Rome (commercium).

In the territory of ancient Italy, then, neither people nor peoples were
fully free or fully equal, and their mere numbers are not the only
determinant of their demography or their production and exchange.
And political, fiscal, military inequalities not only affected economic
relationships; they determined movements of population.

First, movements in space. Rome, the dominant city, possessed or
annexed distant territories in amongst the allies, and filled them — the
process took generations, but it was directed and controlled — with
organized groups or with individuals installed in agricultural settle-
ments (the co/oniae), many of which became a focus for new urban
settlements. Rome controlled part of the land of Italy, confiscated by
right of conquest; and access to ownership or enjoyment of that land was
to be a principal battleground of economic and political conflict. Shifts
of population in Italy were never entirely spontaneous, at least before
about 89-75 B.c., and even after that the ruling authority, for political as
much as socio-economic reasons, did its best to control or direct them,
for example by the ‘colonizations’ of Sulla and Julius Caesar and
Augustus.

Secondly, internal movements. Ancient cities, for obvious military
and fiscal reasons, were very conscious of their ‘wealth of men’ and very
jealous to maintain it (within limits that we shall observe). They sought
periodically to count it with exactitude: censuses run all through their
history and are often central to their institutions. The censuses reflect

5 Not administratively annexed co Italy till the creation of the Augustan regiones, perhaps ¢. 7 B.C.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

602 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

two contradictory anxieties: the dread of manpower shortage (military
above all) and lack of resources in the face of potential rivals, and the
opposite dread of being swamped by outsiders, of free or slave origin,
who might threaten the economic, social or political balance of the
community. We could no doubt write a much better demography of
antiquity if only we had all the statistical records they must have
accumulated in their archives. And yet even if we did have all the
demographic figures of the ancients they would still be misleading. For
they are always affected by the segmentation of their societies into
different juridical statuses: their degree of accuracy was very different
according to whether they were dealing with full Roman citizens or with
Latins or allies, or with free as against non-free.®

The vital importance, as well as the great difficulty, of these questions
is shown by the changes that occurred several times in our period in the
organization of the censuses in Rome and Italy. At first, a census
certainly implied the physical presence of the citizen at the political
centre of his city and his personal appearance before the authorities. It is
probable’ that from the third century onwards, for many Roman citizens
Sine suffragio, the census took place locally, and so also for the inhabitants
of the coloniae Latinae; the overall figures’ were sent to Rome and
centralized there. Whether that is so or not, after the Social War? the
whole population of Italy was counted locally: the ancient personal
procedure persisted — down to Julius Caesar, anyhow — just for the
inhabitants of Rome.

1. Population figures

For trying to evaluate the population of Italy and its evolution all we
have is thirty-nine sets of Roman census figures (i.e. of capita civium)
between 508 B.c. and A.p. 14; that is about 38 per cent of all there were,
and ought to be enough for seeing how it evolved.!° But for our period
the gaps are due not just to the accidents of survival but to the evident
collapse of the administrative machinery consequent upon the political
and economic difficulties of the first century B.c. Also the interpretation
of the figures we do have, sometimes dubiously transmitted, has been the
object of many an argument. The standard view is now that before 28
B.C. the only people listed, with one or two exceptions, were adult males;
they were included right down to the poorest (with varying degrees of

6 To say nothing of the large margin of error due to the inadequacies of communication and
transport and of the administration itself.

7 Humbert 1978 (F 80) 3 10ff.

8 Which might well be inadequate, since they were arrived at according to the local rules.

° The evidence is in the Table of Heraclea, to be dated between 75 and 45 B.C.
10 See the table opposite.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

508B.C.
503
498
493
474
465
459
393/2
340/39

6. 323

294/3

289/8(?)
280/79
276/5
265 /4

252/1
247/6
241/0

234/3
209/8
204/3

194/3
189/8

CONTEXT: GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY 603

ROMAN CENSUS FIGURES

130,000
120,000
150,700
110,000
103,000
104,714
117,319
152,573
165,000

150,000

262,321

272,000
287,222
271,224
292,234 (or 292, 334. Per. Liv.
XVI gives 382,233)
2975797
241,712
260,000

270,713

137,108 (perhaps rather 237,108)

214,000

143,704 (perhaps rather 243,704)

258,318 (258,310. Per. Liv.
XXXVIII)

258,794

269,015 (267,231. Per. Liv. xt)

312,805

337,022 (Plut. Paw/. 38 gives
337545 2)

328,316

324,000

322,000

327,442

317,933

318,823

394,736 (2294,336)

394,336 (?)

463,000 (or, if amended, 963,000)

910,000

4,063,000
4,233,000

4,937,000

Dionys. v. 20.

Hieronym. Ol. 69. 1.

Dionys. v. 75.

Dionys. vi. 96.

Dionys. 1x. 36.

Livy it. 3.

Livy 111. 24; Eutrop. 1. 16.

Pliny, HN xxxu. 16.

Euseb. Ol. r1o. 1 (cf. Beloch (1886) a 8, 340
n. 9).

Oros. v. 22. 2; Eutrop. v.g; the MSS figure
in Livy Ix. 19 (250,000) should be
amended; likewise that in Plut. 326c
(130,000). Cf. Beloch (1886) a 8, 341.

Livy x. 47; for variants see Beloch (1886) a
8, 343.

Per, Liv. x1.

Ibid. xiit.

Ibid. xiv.

Eutrop. 11. 18, and Greek translation.

Per. Liv. xviut.

Ibid. xix.

Hieronym. Ol. 134.1 (Euseb. Armen. Ol.
134. 3, gives 250,000, cf. Beloch(1886) a 8,
344 N. 2).

Per. Liv. xx.

Livy xxvir. 36; so too in the Perioche.

Livy xxtx. 37 and Per.

Livy xxxv. 9.

Livy xxxvilr. 36.

Per. Liv. xut.
Livy XLII. ro.
Per. Liv. xLv.

Ibid. xuvt.

Ibid. xuvu.

Ibid. xuvini.

Euseb. Armen. Ol. 158. 3.

Per. Liv. Liv.

Ibid. LI.

Ibid. ux.

Ibid. uxt.

Hieronym. Ol. 173. 4.

Phlegon (Jacoby no. 257) F. 12. 6. Per. Liv.
XCVIII gives 900,000.

Res Gestae 8. 2.

Ibid. 8. 3.

Ibid. 8. 4. The Fasti Ostienses give 4,100,900
(Ehrenberg and Jones, Documents Illus-
trating Reigns of Ang. and Tib. 40).

Table from P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C. — A.D. 14 (1971 (A 16)) pp. 13-14.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

604 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

accuracy), but women and children were excluded. In 28 and 8 B.c. and
A.D. 14, on the other hand, the figures are only explicable on the
assumption that the whole citizen population was included (again with
varying margins of error). That basic difference means that we cannot
talk in terms of a long-term natural population increase (1.e. through
births). We have always, also, to take into account the granting of
citizenship to people — individuals or groups — who did not have it
before: the increase between 115/4 and 70/69, for example, from 395,000
to 910,000 can only be explained in that way. But even when the whole
free population of Italy had been subsumed under Roman citizenship
(which was not before the 60s B.C.) the figures only give us a very partial
sense of the whole population: how many women and children were
there, and, above all, how many slaves, so essential to the economy? One
can only make cautious hypotheses.

Then again, for the first half of our period (133 to 70-Go B.c.) what
proportion of the population of Italy was non-Roman? All we possess
are remote and imperfect testimonies concerning, essentially, the con-
tingents the ‘allies’ were supposed or able to provide for the Roman levy.
From figures for 225 B.c., for example,'! we can perhaps conclude that
the total of all Roman citizens was of the order of 923,000, the Latins and
allies together up to 1,829,000.!2 That proportion, 1 to 2, will have
maintained itself till the end of the second century: it corresponds
roughly to the proportion of Italian contingents in the Roman army,
which was at times 60 per cent. But whole regions of Italy — the
southernmost part — remain out of account. Nevertheless, a free
population of Italy in ¢. 225 B.c. of 3 million is in line with reasonable
probability. By the time of Augustus, Italy (and by then it included the
Cisalpina) must have had nearly 4} million free inhabitants.

The crucial problem of slave numbers remains.!3 We have only very
indirect means of judging their numbers. There are figures for war-
prisoners imported in the second and first centuries: 150,000 from
Epirus in 167, a million Gauls, maybe, in 5852.14 We hear of the
importance of the market at Delos ~ mainly for export to Italy — at the
end of the second and beginning of the first century, and of the political
problem over integrating freed slaves in the census lists that raged from
177 to 57 B.C. at least, which is clear proof that their numbers must have
been considerable. Brunt!5 cautiously allows 3 million slaves under

" Polyb. 11.24; Diod. xxv.13; Pliny, HN 111.138; Livy Per. 20.

'2 Corresponding to corrected figures for male adults of 300,000 and 575,600.
So, less crucial, does that as to free non-Romans from overseas.

‘4 Epirus: Polyb. xxx.14; Livy xiv.34.5-6. Gaul: Plut. Caes. 15; App. Celt. 2.
5 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 124-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONTEXT: GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY 605

Augustus, in a total population of 7} million, perhaps even that an
overestimate. There are a few things we know for certain. First, the
number of slaves was certainly much more important at the end of the
second century B.c. than at its beginning, and still more important in the
first century. Secondly, if the ‘Slave Wars’ can be taken as an index of
their numbers — as well as their employment in agriculture and the
worsening of their lot — then the apogee was the wars in Sicily and
Campania in 136-132, in Sicily in 106 and in southern Italy in 73-70; but
they were still a potential or even critical factor in the civil wars in 63, 47
and especially 46-36 with Sextus Pompeius. Thirdly, the rise in the
number of slaves in Italy in our period is due principally to enforced
immigration. That had effects on economic consumption, not because
slaves consumed more than they produced (for most slaves are, by
definition, at the bottom of the economic pecking order) but because,
not being free to choose what to work at, slaves can be used in sectors not
necessarily producing what they personally consume at all, such as
pasturage, vine and olive growing and services of various kinds, and
may thus in the long run contribute to an overall deficit of food
resources. Finally, slavery was perhaps a more transitory condition than
we tend to think, and the grant of freedom a normal expectation for a
high proportion of slaves, maybe up to a third. Now at Rome a freed
slave became a Roman citizen; so the citizen population of Italy, or
certainly of Rome, included at any time a significant proportion of
former slaves and their families.'¢

To have any significance these hypothetical global figures must be
seen in the context of the Mediterranean population as a whole.
According to Diodorus and Josephus!’ Egypt, the ‘most-populated
country’, had 7 to 7} million inhabitants, not counting Alexandria.
Recent calculations'® have given for the three Gauls plus Narbonensis a
total of the order of 5 million. Nothing certain can be said, notwithstand-
ing Beloch’s heroic efforts!® in the last century, about Spain, Africa or
Asia Minor. But it does look as if Italy was one of the most densely
populated zones of the Mediterranean world, perhaps — considering its
area — the most of all after Egypt.2° That was certainly one of the reasons
for Rome’s conquests, but also, by virtue of the enforced immigration of
slaves, one of the consequences of those conquests.

16 Perhaps 200,000 such in Rome between 58 and 45 B.c. (which swelled the number of recipients
of public grain) out of a total population of 600,000 to 800,000.

7 Diod. 1.31; Joseph. BJ 1.16.4.

18 J. Harmand, Les Celtes au second dge du fer (Paris, 1970), 61-5.

19 Beloch 1886 (cG 13).

20 Which was a world of its own, an ‘India of the Mediterranean’, as Strabo suggests,
XV.1.13.690C.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

606 16, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133743 B.C.

2. Distribution and movements of population

Is there a global pattern to be found? It looks as if, over two centuries, the
overall population of Italy, slaves included, increased by about 50 per
cent. That is an average of 4 per cent per annum, and is very small. If we
could measure the immigration accurately we could deduce how much
was due to natural rise; but we have to content ourselves with a pointer
or two. The period was marked, especially from 90 to 28 B.c., by external
wars and internal civil strife that involved the call-up of numbers as great
as or even greater than in the Second Punic War.?! But were the losses as
significant demographically as in that war? Can one trust Velleius’
figure22 of 300,000 dead in the Social War? That is uncertain. It is,
however, probable that those conflicts had at least the effect — when one
thinks how long some of the mobilizations lasted — of putting a brake on
any expansion that might have occurred. The testimonies to, and
complaints of, depopulation from 133 to 18 B.c., from Ti. Gracchus,
from Julius Caesar, from Augustus, even allowing for the fact that they
were only talking about Roman citizens and perhaps only the upper
classes, are too persistent not to represent some reality, as seen at least by
contemporaries. But what did it amount to? We hardly know anything
about their demographic behaviour, either general or of particular
status-groups; we have no certain measure of the rate of nuptiality or
natural fecundity or mortality. The decline in capita civium from 164 to
136 B.C., from 337,000 to 317,000, less than 1,000 per annum, would
represent 6 per cent of the population, if it was absolute. But between 136
and 115 the figure bounces back to 395,000, a rise of 24 per cent, which
cannot conceivably be a natural rise: it must have been due either to the
enfranchisement of peregrines or a massive liberation of slaves (which
has left no trace) or, more likely, to differences or changes in the
compilation of the census — and no doubt to the Gracchan agrarian
assignments.

Unfortunately, nothing in these figures tells us anything about the
fecundity of the groups concerned. Ti. Gracchus’ fear was that poor
citizens could not bring up their children; he did not say they were no
longer having any.#3 Nevertheless, it is possible that that was tending to
happen: but it would be a diminution in the number of future citizens,
not present adults, otherwise where did the new citizens of 115 come
from? Are we to suppose that the rather lower figures of the second
century included only the adsidui, those who had at least some property,
the best future soldiers? But the poor were not in principle excluded from

21 25 per cent of /uniores under arms ¢. 42 B.c., Brunt 1971 (A 16) 512.

22 Vell. Pat. 15.
2 App. BCw. 1.30 and 40; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8; Rich 1983 (Cc 121) 300ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CONTEXT: GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY 607

the census: and the decline — a very small one — in the number of the rich
would hardly have been so disturbing to the political establishment. Be
that as it may, we have to remember that although there was a set of
census grades within the overall totals we do not have the detailed
figures for each grade: we are almost entirely ignorant of the real
distribution of individual fortunes or how they changed.”4

We are perhaps not quite as ignorant as to the division of the
population by regions, and more generally between town and country.
The ‘depopulation’ of the Italian countryside, so frequently referred to
in the sources for our period,?5 perhaps only affected certain regions and
certain social classes (the free peasants, in fact). But the evidence of
archaeology, of which much has been made recently, cannot wholly
overturn so unanimous a tradition. We must stress the growing
importance of urbanization in Italy in this period. Doubtless the
majority of important colonial foundations date from the end of the third
and beginning of the second century, and they were, to begin with, too
restricted to contain within their walls the whole of the new co/oni.26 But
most of those centres, as well as the older towns, indigenous and
otherwise, expanded considerably in the second century (not only in the
first, as used to be supposed). According to Beloch, after Pliny,?’ there
were 434 ‘cities’ (not all important, of course) in Augustan Italy, which
would give an urban population of at least 3 million out of the total of 7—
8 million, i.e. of the order of 4o per cent. That is a considerable
proportion: it is also the proportion characteristic of the Hellenistic
world.28 Evidence is not lacking of the rural exodus into the towns,
Rome principally but also other minor towns like Fregellae. A huge
increase in the size of Rome is attested in the second century,?° but the
rural influx was greatest in the first, when the /eges frumentariae had their
full effect;30 the number of beneficiaries of the public grain was 320,000
between 57 and 46 B.c.3! Archaeology confirms the impression: recent
studies dealing with the Cisalpina, as well as the cities of central and
southern Italy,32 show the transformation after the Social War, with
urban planning, public edifices and walls. It is hard to believe that that
did not carry with it demographic — and so economic — consequences.33

Lastly, can one find, for Italy in our period, evidence of a trend of

24 But see below as to agriculture,

2 From Cic. Aft. 1.19.4 to Livy vi.12.5 at least for Latium; Plut. T?. Gracch. 8 for the Etruscan
seaboard; App. BCiv. 1.7.

26 Tozzi 1974 (G 246), Frederiksen 1976 (G 79).

27 Beloch 1880 (A 7) 360, following Pliny HN m1.

28 Beloch 1909 (G 14) 424-34.

29 Frontinus gives two new aqueducts built in 144 and 125, vii.t.z.

30 Sall. Ca. 37.7; App. BCiv. 11.506.

31 Suet. Tul. 41.5. 32 Gabba 1972 (G 86). 33 Gabba 1976 (G 88).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

608 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

overseas emigration? We have already spoken of enforced immigration,
that of slaves, their numbers considerable but their mortality perhaps
greater than that of the free population and their nuptiality and fecundity
certainly less. But some proportion of that group merges, through the
grant of freedom, with the citizen population in a generation or so.%4
Conversely, Rome and allied Italy saw during the same period substan-
tial emigration. First to the Cisalpina, as we have seen: the ‘Romaniza-
tion’ of the Celtic region of the Po is a major phenomenon of the
period.*5 Also to places abroad: in Spain, Narbonensis, Sicily, Africa,
numerous Roman communities are attested in the second and first
centuries. Elsewhere — in Greece and Asia Minor particularly — many
‘businessmen’ were settled (but also some people owning land): 80,000
are supposed to have been massacred by Mithridates in 88 B.c. Partly
officially encouraged by the despatch of colonies or the settlement of
individuals on confiscated land, partly spontaneous, this emigration was
obviously linked to Rome’s conquests. Brunt estimates the total number
of Roman citizens outside Italy as 370,000 in 69 B.C., 450,000 in 49 and 14
million in 28.

To sum up. From 133 to 43 B.C. the ¢ofa/ population of Italy, it is
highly probable, grew with regularity, enough to maintain the victori-
ous wars in Africa, Greece and Asia and Gaul, notwithstanding the huge
internal military upheavals. There was no collapse, there were no
dramatic famines*® or plagues, and there was substantial emigration.
Italy in the broad sense was probably at that time the most important
high-density zone in the Mediterranean, the biggest agglomeration in
the world, the centre of power and, presently, exchange. Moreover —and
this was essential in a world where no man was complete except as a
citizen of somewhere — Italy was the one massive unitary block in a
fragmented world, its entire free population being Roman citizens from
about 60 B.c. onwards. This positive assessment doubtless hides crises
and disparities and internal shifts that we can dimly perceive in general
but cannot describe in particular; but the basic pattern is as stated. The
image of a dramatic ‘depopulation’ of Italy must be discarded.*”

4 More cannot be said: the phenomenon was already one of dispute at the end of the second
century and even more in the first.

35 See the figures already given. Naturally, the inhabitants of the Cisalpina under Augustus
include the indigenous population, now Roman citizens.

36 Only recurrent ‘food-crises’ in Rome, which is not the same thing.

37 And growth continued in the first century a.p. Of the 5 984,000 cives of Claudius’ census in A.D.
48, a million more than in a.p. 14, not all can have been freedmen and enfranchised peregrines, and
many must have been domiciled in Italy. Tac. Aan, x1.25.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ITALIAN AGRICULTURE 609

II. ITALIAN AGRICULTURE

It is all the more impossible to give a full account of Italian agriculture in
a short chapter, in that the tendency of recent research has been to insist
on diversities, not only geographical but social and economic, because
different products, even different ‘modes of production’, could succeed
one another over time in the same place or coexist in different places at
the same time. The sources are also diverse, being of three kinds. First
_ there is technical literature, that of the agronomists, spread over several
centuries from Cato, ¢. 180-150, to Varro ¢. 57-37 and Columella, ¢. A.p.
50, and of the writers of ‘Natural History’ (for example Pliny the Elder, c.
A.D. 60, on plants and trees). Their examples, figures, and recommenda-
tions have to be handled very critically, but we have now, at least, some
good aids to doing that.38 Under the same heading should be put the
treatises, containing theory and practice, of the “Gromatici’, which are
vital evidence for such things as the juridical and fiscal status of land and
the procedures for establishing landed estates and shaping landscapes.
The second main kind of source derives from the particular statements of
the historians, or of contemporaries, about economic questions; in their
case, too, prudence is called for in view of the discontinuities of such
evidence as well as various sorts of parti pris. Thirdly, in the wake of the
pioneers, Beloch, Pais, Fraccaro, but especially since the Second World
War, we have the ever-intensifying results of archaeology: broad-scale
reconnaissance of settlements and cultivation patterns, and ever more
detailed research into the objects of production — wine and oil, anyhow —
and the routes of exchange, through study of the spread of pottery. All
this has contributed an infinity of new elements to the pattern, though
often difficult to interpret and still more to generalize upon.

1.. Geographical diversity

A re-reading of Nissen, E. C. Semple, Cary, or encyclopaedic surveys
like Almagia—Miglioni, will simply confirm the ecstatic assertions of the
ancients — Varro, Strabo, Vitruvius, Virgil, Pliny —as to the diversity, yet
always moderateness, of the climate of Italy, the multiplicity of her
resources, the equal capacity of her land for all forms of agriculture, not
excluding animal husbandry. However imperfect, before Agrippa and
Augustus,” their ethnographic and statistical-information, their mensu-
ration and their cartography, the Romans, masters of their space in every

38 Such as the works of White 1967 (G 257), Capogrossi Colognesi 1969/1976 (G 30), Martin 1971

(B 73), and good recent editions of Varro, Cato and Pliny.
39 Everything changed with Augustus.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

610 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

sense, and consumers of an ever widening range of goods, knew all
about these diversities and complementarities. It is clear that in our
period Italy, only just beginning to be unified politically under Rome’s
hegemony, was not a unity agriculturally. The geographical horizon of
Cato in the second century does not extend beyond Latium and
Campania, whereas that of Varro a century later encompasses the whole
peninsula, including the Cisalpina (which geographically is not even part
of the Mediterranean system).

The peninsula exhibits great regional disparities, of relief, climate and
soil. But in broad terms the climatic conditions (relative dryness, with
Mediterranean rainfall pattern) determined an agriculture essentially of
cereals and arboriculture (vine and olive), with irrigation necessary for
the cultivation of grasses and legumes. Equally primary, however, was
the opposition between highlands — the central mountain chain, the
plateaux and hill-slopes — which alone retain in summer enough
vegetable cover for pasturage, and the coastal plains, cultivable all the
year round but also capable of serving as winter pasture. A forest cover
certainly much thicker than today, even in southern parts like Bruttium
(the Sila Forest), provided a necessary complement for the pasture of
certain livestock, particularly pigs, in addition to timber.‘ In detail,
however, every region contained internal contrasts in the agriculture it
supported, especially the hilly parts on the one hand and the valleys or
intensely cultivated river basins, Val di Chiana in Etruria, Foligno—
Spoleto depression in Umbria, Val di Diano in Lucania, on the other.

A trait common to all Italy is the importance of drainage in the coastal
plains, and also up to a point in the plain of the Po, which was being
populated and Romanized in the second century. Greeks and Etruscans
introduced very early, in the eighth and seventh centuries, in their
respective areas, sophisticated drainage techniques without which those
regions are too insalubrious for any agricultural development at all. One
historical problem is whether the depopulation and decay of certain areas
in our period (Latium from the fourth century, the coastal plain of
Etruria from the second, the Pomptine Marshes, etc.) were in part
related to the abandonment of drainage systems.

The variety of landscapes within the broad regions explains why, in
spite of the changes in the overall pattern that our period underwent,
Italy was still the ‘land cultivated like a garden’, as Varro called it,4! and
remained very prosperous, even though it abandoned some kinds of
product to the overseas provinces and took readily to the importing of
some kinds of product (paying for them, indeed, by taxing the said
provinces). It is only in a very general sense that one can talk about the

49 Toynbee 1965 (A 121) II p. $95-8. 4. Rast. 1.3; 6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ITALIAN AGRICULTURE 611

‘abandonment’ of the cultivation of some items and the ‘substitution’ of
others; because in fact at the local level polyculture remained the rule and
subsistence economy quite certainly predominated.

However, in the first century B.c. it is possible to pick out some broad
areas of relative specialization: Campania, very rich,* with arable, vines
and olives; the plain of the Po, with arable, sheep and pigs; the highlands
of Samnium and the Sabellian lands, with pasturage and transhumance;
the Etruscan and Sabine plains and coasts with arable and vines; the
exclusively pastoral zones of Lucania and Bruttium. And at the end of
our period a new speculative agriculture, pastio villatica, is practised in
certain areas determined by urban geography (because producing luxury
products for the urban market): southern Latium, Campania and the
lands actually round the cities. The only marked contrast to this unity-in-
diversity of Italy was the annexation of the plain of the Po (involving no
economic or political discontinuity); for its climate and topography were
quite different: more unvaryingly humid and misty, but above all vast
and flat, and thus open, after forest clearing and the expulsion or
containment of the Celtic inhabitants, to large-scale occupatio and the
organization of enormous centuriated areas, for the benefit of Roman
and Italian immigrants.

To the physical diversity we must not neglect to add a diversity of
indigenous patterns of life and traditional social structures, surviving
conquest by Rome, right down to our period: agro-pastoral communi-
ties in Liguria and the Sabellian lands and Samnium,; Gallic tribal systems
with dispersed habitation in the Cisalpina; semi-free peasantry in Etruria
even down to the beginning of the first century, and so on.

2. Diversity of agricultural products

That, too, is attested by the geographers and agronomists and natural
historians; and not to be neglected is the evidence afforded by detailed
studies of diet,*3 which show on the one hand the growing importance of
imported items, but also the taking on board of almost all those items by
the agriculture of Italy itself. From quite early on, even in the diet of the
country people, more isolated than the inhabitants of Rome, a great
diversity is observable: vegetables, fruits of all kinds, spices, poultry: one
need look no further than the pseudo-Virgilian Moretum. But, those
important complements apart, the ancient Italian was a consumer of
cereals, olives, vegetables, pork and salt fish, and a drinker of wine; and
cooking, as well as lighting and medicine, relied on olive oil. That is
what was decisive for the destiny of Italian agriculture.

42 Dion. Hal. Ast. Rom. 1.37. 43 André 1981 (G 3).
3 9 3

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

612 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

3. Techniques

Agriculture was essentially manual, utilizing human and animal labour.
Other sources of energy known to antiquity (which means, really, the
water-mill) only emerged much after our period. Tools were those
developed in the Iron Age — and destined to continue to the present day:
notable, however, was the predominance of the sickle over the scythe for
harvesting grain. The Italian plough of our period was still, at best,
wheel-less*4 and without mould-board, though its metal share may well
have been just as efficient on light soils. The only agricultural machinery
were the grape- and olive-presses described by Cato, which could be
quite powerful pieces of mechanism. One must not underestimate the
technical satisfactoriness of such an agriculture. Provided, always, that
there was a sufficiency of labour it could prove well adapted to soil and
climate, whether for clearing and preparation of ground or for plough-
ing, tilling, harvesting and storing. (More seriously disadvantageous
were the bottle-necks of land transport.) The traditional practices were
improved, from the second century onwards, by the lessons of agricul-
tural science derived from the Greeks: selection and improvement of
species, grafting and hybridization, introduction of new species of
grains, fruits and vines, manuring. Rotation was known, but not
triennial rotation: fallow every other year remained the rule. On the
other hand certain traditional intercultivations flourished, such as two
tree-crops together (vine on poplar in Campania — the Italian vine is
high-grown, with consequences for investment costs) or grain between
olive-rows, with sheep pastured between the trees after the harvest.

4. The major items of production

In our period there were four major items of production (for the market
or otherwise) existing in Italy; and the second and first centuries B.c.
were a period when the respective developments of these items brought
about changes, sometimes rapid and considerable, which contributed,
along with more purely economic and political factors, to give to the
history of Italian agriculture its touch of excitement and even drama.
(a) The first item is cereals. The lowest level of production, and the
commonest, was part of that ‘peasant’ or ‘subsistence’ economy that
recent work has stressed:45 cereals, originally barley, then wheat, with
millet as a back-up, as the staple foodstuff, eaten in the form of porridge,
puls. So they are found as part of every type of agricultural enterprise,
giving no doubt very modest returns (three or four times the seed sown,

“4 Except, by the beginning of the Principate, north of the Alps.
45 Frayn 1979 (G 75) and Evans 1981 (G 64).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ITALIAN AGRICULTURE 613

on average). If the property or unit of management was too small, the
peasant’s survival can only be explained by positing supplementary
resources — garden, common pasture, hiring out of the peasant’s own
labour. Cereal production had also always to feed the cities, which was a
basic problem in the ancient Mediterranean. Hence its presence in areas,
such as the Roman ‘Campagna’, not suited to it, and hence the shortages
and famines recorded at Rome from the fifth century onwards, when
corn had to come from Etruria, Campania or Sicily.

In the third and second centuries we can observe considerable changes
(which, for once, can be seen more clearly in general than in detail). First
an increase in demand, due to urbanization (the growth of Rome from
the third century, accentuated in the second) and to the requirements of
the armies. Then changes in the eating habits of the rich and the city
dwellers: bread supplanting porridge and demanding proportionally
more corn.*6 In the second century the import of grain rises — sporadi-
cally, and for the public distributions, but certainly involving a private-
enterprise market. The grain is from Sicily, Greece, Sardinia, Spain,
Africa; conquest and political factors play a role, and soon (especially
after 123 B.C.) part of the regular import of grain to Rome comes in as
tax. Does all that point to a ‘crisis’ or a big shift in the products of Italian
agriculture? No, for the imports concern only the urban market (though
that may, it is true, mean 4o per cent of the population), and cereals go on
being needed to feed the work-force even in areas given over to other
items of production. So they probably continued to be grown every-
where, except in a few areas where we can document for certain the:
abandonment of land or its conversion into vine or olive growing. If the
Roman ‘Campagna’ ceased to be cereal-growing, along with some parts
of southern Italy (the coast of the Gulf of Taranto), Campania, for all its
vineyards, remained a ‘granary’ at least down to 63 B.c. and the really
determining fact is that Italy did not produce enough: that was the real
reason for the growing importance of a large-scale commerce in grain
froma distance (concurrently with the supplies that came in as tax), and it
was the imports that created an equilibrium, however fragile and
punctuated by ‘grain crises’ in 154, 124, 115, culminating, maybe, in 66
and 57 B.c. Commercial importation, it was, on the grand scale, always
highly speculative, making huge profits in time of shortage but always
liable to undercutting by state intervention. What we never hear of in
our sources, though, is a total decline in Italian cereal production, nor of
a collapse of internal prices nor even of a competition with external
prices.

(b) The second main item is arboriculture, i.e. fruit orchards of every

46 Pliny HN xviti.107-8, Plaut. Asin. 200.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

614 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

sort but especially, of course, the olive and the vine. Both had ancient
roots in Italy: both were imported, probably from Greece, at an early
period. But — climatic constraints apart, which excluded the olive from
the Cisalpina — their development, a tremendous feature of our period, is
the result of new outlets for production and new structures of manage-
ment. Significantly, of some six different estates discussed by Cato in his
thoroughly practical treatise, the two best known and most important,
of 100 and 240 /ugera respectively, are a vineyard and an olive-plantation.
They involve, allowing for the area necessarily taken up with feeding the
labour-force, substantial initial capital outlay: deferred harvest, quin-
cunx planting, labour intensiveness. Italy in Cato’s and Varro’s time
produced oil of high reputation, but by the end of the Republic the huge
production of Spain and Africa was beginning to supply Rome and the
rest of Italy.

More disputed — and more interesting — are the vicissitudes of Italian
wine production; and one is beginning to know them much better,
thanks above all to the systematic study of amphora stamps, though the
results only go to confirm what an unprejudiced reading of the texts
ought to have shown anyhow.

Local vineyards, producing, more or less everywhere, wines of no
particular quality and so no export potential; that was no doubt the
situation in the fourth and third centuries. The cities, especially Rome,
could offer a clientéle with plenty of well-off people, but they imported
their wine from Greece.” From the beginning of the second century all
that changes. The Italians begin to produce their own quality wines, and
in quantity, so that their traces are found at great distance. First on the
Adriatic coast from Picenum to the Po delta, then in Apulia. About the
middle of the century progress accelerates: first, a memorable novelty,
the appearance of the Italian vins de cru that we meet in the literature, all
concentrated, in our period, in south Italy and Campania (Falernian);
then, an increase in consumption at Rome and in other cities, due to
changes in food-habits (bread) and the enrichment of the governing class
and even, however relatively, the plebs, who were getting grain at
subsidized prices. Rome thus became the commercial outlet for both
mass-produced wines, from Latium and a bit further, and quality wines,
Campanian and Apulian. Consumption has been estimated, for the end
of the first century B.C., at more than a million hectolitres per annum,
much more than in eighteenth-century Paris.48 Yet more striking is the
growth of an export trade that became massive — hundreds of thousands
of hectolitres per annum — at first, maybe, to satisfy the demands of the

47 Attested from the middle of the second century, Macrob. Saf. 11.16.14, down to Horace and

even later, and confirmed by Rhodian amphorae that turn up here and there.
48 Tchernia 1969 (G 237).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ITALIAN AGRICULTURE 615

armies and of Roman émigrés in Spain and Gaul; but presently we find
attested a huge stream of export, both eastwards, centring on the market
of Delos, and westwards into mid-Gaul (Aquitania and the Rhone
valley).*° The product originated in the vineyards of Campania and the
coast of Etruria; the end-points, often the mining districts of Gaul, are
proof that the consumers were not only the Roman armies, as has
sometimes been held.>° The emergence of Italy between the beginning of
the second and the end of the first century B.c. as a major centre of
consumption, production and a/so export of wine isa historical fact of the
first order; and ‘crisis’, in fact, only came, relatively, in the first and
second centuries A.D., with the rise of the vineyards of Spain and Gaul.

(c) The third item is animal husbandry. The Roman agronomists,
perhaps unconscious inheritors of proto-historic conflicts between
pastoralists and agriculturalists, are at times unforthcoming about it; the
question of the ‘decline’ of agriculture in the face of pasturage touches a
sensitive nerve in old dreads of famine.5! That does not prevent them,
however, from Cato to Pliny,5? from declaring stock-raising the most
profitable of farming enterprises. Questions about its development
bring us to numerous well-known problems: the size ofestates (problem
of /atifundia), the status of land (problem of ager pyblicus); the type of
labour involved.

We must certainly begin by distinguishing two types of animal
husbandry. The first is omnipresent in every mode of agricultural
production, intensive but secondary. Cattle are reared for traction, for
hides, for meat, not for milk or manure; sheep are reared for their wool,
the staple of Roman clothing. We should note (however disputed) the
importance of the goat, and also that of the big-scale rearing of equines —
horses, mules, etc. — for transport, private and public but especially
military. We should further note® that in most Roman colonial founda-
tions, which doubtless acted as a kind of model of land use, the very small
size of the plots allotted for cultivation can only be explained by the
existence of common and public pastures, usually on the fringes, in the
swampy or hilly areas.

Secondly, however, in various parts of Italy, from the beginning of
the second century onwards, there emerges a different type of animal
husbandry altogether, grand-scale transhumance, linking the winter

49 According to Tchernia, more than 100,000 hectolitres per annum throughout a century, just
for Gaul alone.

50 A discovery, and an excavation, remarkable but certainly not unique, is that of the villa at
Settefinestre, of the first half of the first century B.c., whose amphorae, doubtless belonging to the
owners of the estate, Cicero’s Sestii, illustrate the relationship between production and commerciali-
zation. Manacorda 1978 (B 309); Rathbone 1981 (G 207); Carandini 1985 (B 267).

51 Varro Rust. u Praef., Columella, Praef. 4-5. 32 Cic, Off. 11.89; Pliny HN xvitt.2z9.

53 With Tibiletti 1955 (G 242) and Gabba 1978 (G 90).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

616 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

pastures of the coastal plains with summer grazing in the high pastures of
the central Apennines.54 From that time at least exist the calles, the
reserved transhumance tracks, under the charge of the pablicani who
levied the scriptura. We are dealing here with hundreds of thousands of
animals on the move, accompanied by armies of herdsmen; that led to
repeated conflicts with the farmers beside whose lands the ca/les passed.%

It is certain that many of the extensive stock-raising enterprises began
on lands that were occupati out of ager publicus by methods or in virtue of
privileges that met with opposition, even if the squatters were also using
ager publicus they had rented, e.g. in the mountains. So it is not surprising
that the ‘agrarian question’ revolves partly round this extensive stock-
raising.56 However, it must not be forgotten that long-distance transhu-
mance is attested in Italy from proto-historic times.5” Be that as it may,
and whatever the resistance encountered, large-scale animal husbandry
proliferated at the end of the Republic.‘

Along with the exploitation of pasture went, in a sense, that of forest.
For example, it was by virtue of its forests as pasture for pigs that the
Cisalpina was able to keep all Italy supplied with pork products down to
the first century.5° Ancient forests — and Italy was one of the major
sources, along with the northern Balkans — supplied not only wood for
heating, for shipbuilding and for building construction in general (and
one notes what an important feature that was of Rome from the third to
the first century B.c.), but also resources subsidiary to stock-raising and
especially resin and pitch; and timber was also absolutely bound up with
the development of viticulture.

(d) Lastly, the most specialized item: the new speculative agriculture
which only developed in the first century B.C. in relation to urban
markets, especially Rome, i.e. ‘villas’ and even simple smallholdings
given over either to very specialized animal raising — poultry, luxury
table birds, nanny-goats for milking (the pastio villatica of Varro) — or to
luxury market gardening — flowers, fruit and vegetables. It is, signifi-
cantly, for these sorts of enterprise that Varro quotes the highest profit
figures.

J. The structures of agriculture and their evolution

By ‘structures’ we are to understand the dimensions and nature both of
the properties and of the units of management. We have to study the

34 Varro Rust, 1.1.16. 55 Varro Rusé. 1.10.1-11, Cic. Clu. 161.

56 See the elogium from Polla, CIL 12 638=ILLRP 454.

57 Radmilli 1974 (G 205) 20, and Gabba and Pasquinucci 1979 (G 95) 87f.

58 Domitius Ahenobarbus enrolled his herdsmen in his fleet, Caes. BCiv. 1.57; and C. Caecilius
Isidorus, under Augustus, owned 7,200 cattle and 257,000 sheep, Pliny HN xxx11.134.

59 Polyb. 1.15.2, Strab. v1.12. 6 Meiggs 1982 (G 157); Giardina 1981 (G 103).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ITALIAN AGRICULTURE 617

relationship of two main forms of management: direct management,
with various sub-forms, on the one hand, and letting to tenants, whether
at a rent or sharecropping, on the other. Other questions are posed by the
status of the work-force — slaves (of various kinds) or free wage-earners
(also of various statuses). Finally we shall touch on the obvious
interaction, in our period, between civic and political questions, such as
use of ager publicus, agrarian legislation, colonization of various sorts, and
the impact of civil war, and the economic problems of agriculture.
The changes in the main sectors of production, sketched above, were
accompanied — the tradition is unanimous, and even if archaeology may
modify it somewhat it would be idle to deny it altogether — by profound
changes in the structures of agriculture (though let us recall once more
its great diversity). The first fact, on the global scale incontestable, is the
increase in the number, area and value of ‘large estates’, already in the
second century but especially in the first, after the Social War and Sulla.
Although the word J/atifundium only turns up under the Empire, the
thing, or something like it, is certainly attested in numerous sources.®!
But what is the level at which one ought to begin talking of ‘large
estates’? 400 /ugera, as in a passage in the Gromatici?® Or the 500 éugera
plus 250 per child plus 1,800 — according to Tibiletti’s figures — for the
number of animals to be pastured, making 625 hectares or 1,545 acres,
given by the second-century agrarian legislation? Certainly those are
already substantial figures: the estates described by Cato are of 100 and
240 dugera (though doubtless the owner would have had other pieces of
property given over to other crops); and the individual plots attested
when Roman or Latin colonies were founded or lands assigned were
always notably smaller, even in the Cisalpina.®> But we know, particu-
larly from prosopography,® that most senatorial and even equestrian
landed fortunes in our period must have been much larger still. Q.
Roscius of Ameria, round about 80 B.c., had thirteen estates in the Tiber
valley worth 6 million sesterces; and he is presented as a man with a
modest fortune. Already at the end of the second century P. Crassus
Mucianus possessed perhaps 100,000 ixgera,®> and the scale is still
changing in the first century, with the fortunes of M. Crassus, Lucullus,
Pompey® and numerous others. Nothing illuminates better these
immense concentrations of landed property than Caecilius Isidorus,
already cited, and L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who in 49 was ina position
to promise several shousands of his soldiers plots of land from 4 to 10

White 1967 (G 257).

62 ‘Gromatici’ p. 157 Lachm.; Evans 1980 (G 63) 24, but the sense dubious.

63 140 éugera at Aquileia in 181 B.c., for the equites, is an exception.

64 Shatzman 1975 (a 112), Nicolet 1974 (A 80) 285-313, Rawson 1976 (G 209).
65 His fortune exceeded 10 million denarii, Cic. Rep. 1.17.

66 200 million sesterces just in land.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

618 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

hectares and to man a fleet out of his ‘tenants, freedmen and slave
herdsmen’.® If one adds that the Roman upper class, senators and many
equites, possessed also extensive lands in the provinces,® it can be seen
that the emergence of huge landed patrimonies, and the accentuation of
the trend in the first century B.c., ought not to be doubted.

To know whence that arose, or measure it in economic terms, is
another matter. To read the agronomists, one would not think that the
profit from land, even in the sectors and at the epochs of expansion, such
as the fine wines in the second century, could have fostered a significant
enlargement of estates, fora return of 6 or 7 percent on capital would not
have done it. Political history provides the answer: it was imperialism,
whether military or peaceful, that caused the movement to take off. First,
ager publicus, i.e. usually land confiscated from defeated enemies, which
built up gradually in the fourth and third centuries, but with a big surge
in south Italy after the Hannibalic War. That was where the customary
squatting took place (occupatus ager), excessive or even blatantly illegal,
which the various agrarian laws tried to hold down to 500 éugera (in
practice much more); and that was the land that authors of agrarian bills
like Rullus in 63 were accused of ‘speculating’ on. Next, the direct results
of conquest, or civil war, for the Roman political class: the most fabulous
fortunes in the first century were made by successful generals, by friends
of the powerful like Chrysogonus in times of proscription, and so on.
The Roman landed magnates were, in fact, the product of power.
Finally, in some cases, large or even very large properties could be the
proceeds, invested in land, of commercial and financial enterprise,
sometimes of a kind to keep quiet about, like the slave trade. We know
one or two cases,® but many must lurk unattested.7°

Now concentration of ownership even into enormous units does not
necessarily carry with it unity of management. It is actually certain that
the very big Roman proprietors, like Pliny later on, even at the municipal
or equestrian level, preferred, through prudence or predilection, multi-
ple separate fundi to one enormous management unit: we know some
cases, from Pompey to Atticus and Varro himself. So it is highly
probable that the same patrimony would consist of a number of smaller
units of very different types.7!

But a central problem is still what happened to small and medium
properties in Italy. It used to be the standard view that such properties

67 See n. 58 above.

68 Like Varro’s friends the stock-raisers of Epirus, Rws/, 1 Praef. 7 and Cic. As. 1.5.7. Cf.,
however, Wiseman, pp. 328-9 and Rawson, pp. 446-7, above.

6 Fulcinius in Cic. Caee. 11; Cic. Off. 1.151.

70 See however the recent studies of Praeneste, e.g. Bodei Giglioni 1977 (G 17).

71 By ‘types’ here we mean types of management, discussed immediately below.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ITALIAN AGRICULTURE 619

declined considerably from the beginning of the second century, at least
in many areas, to the advantage either of the great ‘villa’ with a slave
labour-force or of the agro-pastoral /atifundium. \t is clear that one should
not speak of total disappearance (though that is done, too often and too
hastily), if only in the light of the official counter-measures that were
taken, by colonization and agrarian assignation; clear, also, that within
the same geographical area the big domain and the big slave-run villa
could coexist with an earlier traditional agriculture of small peasants.
However, we must not allow the pendulum to swing back too far and, in
particular, make archaeology say what it cannot say. The fact that one
can find traces of dispersed rural habitation in such-and-such an area at
such-and-such an epoch (supposing them datable at all) gives us very
little precise information about the real scale of operations, and nothing
whatever about the type of management: these dwellings may have
housed tenant-farmers, sharecroppers, even ‘living-out’ slaves. Equally,
the reasoning, logical enough, that consists of estimating the size of the
non-servile work-force implied for the functioning of the slave-run villa of
Catonian-Varronian type is certainly valid in demographic terms, but it
does not enable us to be precise about exactly what this subsidiary work-
force consisted of; it might have been neighbouring small landowners
hiring out their labour; neighbours hiring out their slaves; free non-
owners or non-tenants hiring out their labour; groups of workers, free
or slave, hired out by an entrepreneur supplying seasonal labour; tenants
or sharecroppers of the owner of the villa; and so on. All this, indeed,
counsels prudence; but in these pages we shall accept,’? broadly, the
testimony of the literature: small citizen — and no doubt Latin and allied —
properties did decline sharply from the second century, for a variety of
reasons. First the Hannibalic War, which killed and ruined farmers; then
the pressures of recruitment for service overseas, making a hole every
year in the free population of the countryside; again, the squeeze of the
rich neighbour who could afford to buy ata high price or might profit by
the absence of the family head to seize bits of land illegally; finally, simple
abandonment and departure into the town in search of work or
subsistence. For one thing is certain: whatever the subsidiary resources
provided by the ‘peasant economy’ or the rights of common pasture in
the territories of the co/oniae, the fate of the small peasant in the second
and first centuries was bound to be precarious, except in a few special
cases, and the exodus to the towns, the armies, or overseas frequent
enough for the state to have tried repeatedly in different ways to halt it;
but the tiny size of the plots usually envisaged for distribution often only
put off the evil day.”

7 With Gabba and contra Frederiksen, Garnsey, Rathbone, Evans.
% App. BCiv. 1.7 and 30 and qo; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8, Sall. Iug. q1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

620 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

One must not think only in terms of landowners. Tenancy at a rent and
sharecropping”* were widespread. Unfortunately we cannot draw up
either a geographical or a chronological table; but Cato, and more often
Varro and Columella, mention contracts of tenancy and discuss (from
the landowner’s point of view) the respective advantages of these
systems: everything depended on the size and the location and the type of
enterprise. There could even exist a class of ‘gentlemen tenants’,’> but
others were quite small fry: those who obeyed the summonses of
Pompey and Domitius Ahenobarbus can only have been more or less
clients. There were even coloni who were ‘out-dwelling’ slaves.”

And so we come, of course, to the most famous of all the changes in
Italian agriculture: the slave-based enterprise, whether a mixed farm
practising polyculture or a specialized villa with vines and a semi-
industrial organization, or a huge stock-raising ranch. It would not be
right to look simply at the ager Cosanus” and declare that that evidence
shows that this type of villa only appears in the first century B.C.; that
would make nonsense of the whole of Cato and the second- and first-
century agronomists like the Sasernas. Villas, and extensive stock-
raising with armies of herdsmen, must have begun to develop from the
second century,’8 and one must therefore relate them to the enormous
round-up of humanity that that century saw, with the Delos slave-
market at its apogee, and to the slave revolts in Sicily and Italy from 136
to 73 B.C. So it is quite certain that, at one particular time and in certain
particular areas and at a particular level there did come into being a new
and characteristic ‘mode of production’.’9 That said, to ask whether the
slave ‘mode of production’ was cause or effect of the conquests is to pose
a false question: many factors, demographic and economic, played their
part, the existence of Rome as a market, for example. Where it existed,
though, it certainly in its turn created new factors, very disturbing ones.
It introduced a large non-Italian element into the population of Italy; it
broke the vital traditional links between ownership of the soil and the
life, rights and duties of the civis Romanus; it interposed between the
owner and his work-force, for all the paternalism of a Varro or a
Columella,®° a whole hierarchy of supervisory grades, both costly to
employ and leading at times to ruinous rebellions. Fragile, therefore, in
the long run, in spite of apparent advantages, the slave ‘mode of
production’ is certainly a fact of importance for our purposes; but its

™ The generic name is /ocatio conductio, and the word colonus, at least in the first century B.C., means
either. 75 Like the cofonus in Cic. Clu. 175.

76 Alfenus Varus, D.15.3.16; 40.7.14; Labeo, D.33.7.12.3.

7” The villa maritima of the Sestii, devoted to vines.

78 Gabba 1977 (G 89); 1982 (G 92); 1979 (G 95).

79 Which is not to deny, of course, that slavery in general isa wider phenomenon and lasted much
longer. 8 Colum. Rust. 1.8.20.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ITALIAN AGRICULTURE 621

importance was by no means purely economic, as Columella’s mislead-
ing calculations might lead one to imagine,®! for every aspect of
agriculture was always bound up with civics and politics and mytholo-
gies, which is why the political and ideological battles that raged around
it in the Roman experience were so bitterly waged.

6. The ‘agrarian question’

Of those famous battles there is no place for a detailed account here.®? It
remains to draw attention to a fact or two often misunderstood or
neglected.

(a) Land-distributions, whether colonial or viritane, involved only
ager publicus, which formally remained such (even if the rights of the
populus over it seem to have been tacitly abandoned in 133 for certain
pieces of land). Not until the civil wars of 83-80 and 44-36 B.c. do we get
the distribution of what had been private land; and even of that the
origins often lay in occupatio. The principle of private property remained
inviolate, and agrarian legislation actually reinforced it.

(b) The whole colonizing movement, culminating in the early second
century, consisted in planting nuclei of small-to-medium private owner-
ship in agrarian zones: it was a rural movement,®3 even if in the long run
it created a new urban geography for Italy.

(c) Not enough study has been given to exactly how colonization
worked. In the case of the military colonies, i.e. colonies of veterans, we.
know roughly who were the beneficiaries, but the criteria for recruit-
ment for the viritane assignments, both before and after the Gracchi, are
infinitely less well known,®* and equally so the real procedures for
installing people on their plots of land, the costs, and so on.

(d) Even when there was divisio et assignatio the presiding magistrates
had an absolute right to plots of land ‘kept aside’, for themselves and
their associates.85 A probable source of some big landed concentrations.

(e) Not enough study has been given, either, to the legal rules and
practical procedures of how people were granted contracts ‘let’ by the
censors for handling the public revenues, nor to how people got access
to occupatio, the right to squat on and farm ager publicus,®© which pre-
Gracchan legislation and the Lex Sempronia purported to set limits to.
Where were such contracts entered into? How? On what terms? A proper
study of those questions ought to shed some extra light on the

81 [bid 1.7-8. 82 They are dealt with in several chapters in Part 1.
83 Tibiletti 1955 (G 242) Tozzi 1974 (G 246).

84 For an exception, Suet. Iw/. 20.3, in §9 B.C.

85 “Gromatici’ pp. 133 and 157 Lachm.

86 A kind of ‘emphyteusis’? (Buckland, Text Book of Roman Laz (London, 1963) 275: ‘land...
granted in perpetuity for a long term at a rent fixed in kind’.)

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

622 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

concentration of big squatters’ holdings and on the nature of the
conflicts aroused by the Gracchan laws.

(f) If there had not been an accumulation of ‘big estates’ ~ above 120
hectares at least, and in fact much bigger — there would not have been a
socio-political problem in 133 B.c.; equally so, if there had still been ager
publicus not yet taken up and available for distribution.8’ The stock of at
least Italian land was evidently exhausted by 133.

(g) The texts, by referring to the activities of the agrarian commission
in 129 and again in 123-119, and the archaeological data of centuriations
and cippi, prove that the Lex Sempronia must have been functioning at
least down to 111. To try to put a figure on its results, in people and in
acreage, is another question. The Brunt—Nicolet estimate,®® that if you
count the number of beneficiaries at 75,000 you get an area redistributed
of 562,500 hectares or well over 1} million acres, is not implausible: it is
equivalent to a square of side 75 kilometres.

(h) Then there is the question, not much studied as such, of the real
scope of the imposts that agricultural exploitation of ager publicus was
subject to. (They might take the form of tax or rent or licence fees.) The
one as per iagerum on ager trientabularius ceded to creditors of the Republic
in 202 was nominal, purely a licence fee. But in other cases ager publicus
ceded to its existing holders or to new holders brought revenue to the
Roman state. How much? And even before that, there was some charge
for occupatio, apparently standard.89 Now such imposts, on various
categories of land, reduced, pro tanto, the income from that land of the
owner or possessor. Were they seen as fiscal in character — hence their
disappearance after 167 — or as a contribution to anznona — hence their
reappearance from 123?% In any case, it does not seem as if this aspect of
things, though important politically, had any strictly economic impact:
no source ever, for Italy, speaks of economic consequences of taxation
(on this or that type of enterprise, for example).

(i) Lastly, what do we know in general about the market in land in our
period? We can be sure that it was dependent on some strictly economic
considerations, quality of the soil, climate, closeness or otherwise to
routes of transport, and so on. But, as almost always, it was also
dependent on a whole range of other factors, especially the shifts of
politics. First of all, the social value of land in a society based on census,
where status actually in part depends on the possession of real estate: one
notices that land was forever being demanded as security in a whole
range of contracts, public and private. Secondly, the fact that a

87 As at the beginning of the second century, with colonies being depopulated.
88 Brunt 1971 (a 16) 75-80; Nicolet 1978 (A 83) 132-3.

89 A tenth ora fifth of the fruits? App. BCiv. 1.27 and 75-6.

% The question needs looking at again. See Nicolet 1976 (G 174) 79-86.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

INDUSTRY AND MANUFACTURE 623

considerable fraction of the land was ager publicus, and so had an
ambiguous status, whether advantageous or otherwise: that fact was
bound to affect the mobility as well as the value of landed property. Even
more plainly, great quantities of confiscated property came on to the
market, for reasons not at all economic but political, at times of
proscription or civil war (83—80, 48-47, 44-43 B.C.), with consequences,
noted in our sources, for prices. Some of the consequences were natural,
some the results of skulduggery of various kinds: the usual initial effect
was a slump.

The influx of coin, on the other hand, from conquest, from enlarged
emissions, and so on, had the opposite effect of pushing prices up. And
there were more subtle factors to upset the laws of the market: a threat of
civil war, as in 63 B.C., or an agrarian bill, might raise or lower the value
of some particular bit of land. A detailed history of these fluctuations
within a given area is not altogether out of reach. It makes difficult the
assertion of any general tendency; but one will not be likely to be wrong
to assert that real estate went on being, for Roman society in our period,
an investment for both long-term security and social prestige.

III. INDUSTRY AND MANUFACTURE

We have seen the extent and richness of Italy’s arable land, its vineyards
and olive-groves and its pastures. Many of the products of this land (to
which should be added stone) were important also for industrial
production: wool, for example, for clothing, or wood for buildings,
ships, heating and lighting,®? stone for building and sculpture, clay,
again for building, and for pottery. Italy is well supplied all over with
such items, and we should begin by recalling that in antiquity a good —
perhaps a major — part of industrial production was widely diffused,
turning up more or less everywhere and based on primary materials,
including minerals, that were present everywhere, if only in minute
quantities. One cannot write the history of production at.that purely
local level. However, antiquity did go through successive industrial
revolutions. They occurred, first, when the demand for some product in
some centre of consumption outran the local supplies and necessitated
the importation of ever greater quantities from ever further away: in that
situation, according to the soil, the ease of transport, the availability of
labour, there would arise privileged ‘zones of production’, a geography
of primary products with their markets and the centres where they were
converted into secondary products. Secondly, industrial revolutions
occurred in respect of the scarce resources that did not occur at all (or

9% In the sense proper to antiquity, of course.
92 And we have already noted (p. 616) the importance of resin and pitch.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

624 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133743 B.C.

only negligibly) in a given region. First and foremost, mines and metals:
from proto-historic times on, the history of long-distance contacts in the
Mediterranean has been mainly determined by the search for metals
(gold, silver, copper, tin and, toa lesser degree, iron), the whereabouts of
which is conditioned by the facts of geology, though mines, too, have a
history of change: discovered, exploited, exhausted, sometimes
resumed. From the production of iron tools, indispensable for every sort
of work (including warfare), to the working of bronze for ordinary or
luxury use, metallurgy was an intensively practised activity, both
widespread and concentrated, a fact which must be constantly borne in
mind. And when monetized economies appeared and spread, with their
three metals, gold, silver and bronze, access to those metals became a
first-order problem for governments: it may well be that metal produc-
tion and metallurgy determined, especially in our period, the most
striking changes.

Now from this point of view, Italy as a whole is in an anomalous
situation, having virtually no gold or silver.%3 Italy was considered rich
in copper and iron in the Greek archaic and classical periods, in Magna
Graecia and Etruria; but except for the iron mines of Elba,* which
maintained a significant activity even at the end of the first century B.c.,
most of those mines were exhausted or closed during our period. The
same is true of those that began to be exploited less early, in the Cisalpina
and the Alps in the second century; they were initially the object ofa sort
of ‘rush’ of private enterprise,°5 and were subsequently exploited by
publicani;® but they were soon either closed by authotity” or abandoned
because they were less productive than those of Gaul and Spain. The
major centres of production were, anyway, elsewhere: in the East and the
Balkans,” but above all, of course, Spain, whose mining areas were
exploited in turn by Carthage and Rome from the beginning of the
second century to the end of the first century B.c. And at the extreme end
of our period Gaul and Britain begin to come into the pattern.

The disappearance of extractive industry did not stop the continua-
tion of secondary metal industry, based on the importation of the metal
in ingots: it went on all over Italy, being well attested around Arretium
in the Second Punic War! and also in the famous passage where Cato
gives the places of production — and even in some cases the names of the
craftsmen — of the agricultural implements he says are needful: Rome,
Cales, Venafrum, Pompeii, Capua, Nola, Suessa, Casinum.'?! The

°3 Except in the Alpine region.

4 Diod. v.13; Strab. v.2.6. 9 Strab. 1v.6.12, from Polybius.

% Strab. 1v.6.7; Pliny HN xxxu1.78. 97 Pliny HEN 111.138. 98 Strab. v.1.12.

°° Laurium was still active in 136-133, and the iron and silver mines of Macedonia still essential in
167 and 158. 100 Livy Xxvitg5.13. 101 Cato Agr. 135.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

INDUSTRY AND MANUFACTURE 625

importance of a metal industry is corroborated by the mention of
armament production in Italy in 100 and go B.c.!02

Let us, as in the case of agriculture, briefly note the extremely
traditional, empirical and small-scale character of the industrial tech-
niques, resting essentially on human and animal power, but at the same
time (as in the case of agriculture) not underestimate the efficacity, often
noted by ancients as well as moderns, and indeed the spectacular success,
of some of the achievements: advanced mining techniques, especially in
Spain; mastery of bronze founding or of goldsmith’s craft; employment
of some machinery, wooden or metal, like pumps for draining mines and
washing ore;!% other advanced hydraulics;! technical progress in
amphora construction, especially with regard to the ratio of weight to
content. There has been too much emphasis on the ‘technical bottle-
necks’ of antiquity, in the field of transport, for example; study of the
literature of technology and materia) culture permits some correction of
these over-hasty views. However, it is mainly in the organization of
labour and diversification of use of the labour-force that those changes in
the nature and scale of production occurred which interest us: the case of
building techniques perhaps gives the key.!%

Let us rapidly review a few major sectors.

(a) Of the wood, textile and leather industries we have none but
indirect and fleeting testimony: a ‘portico of the wood-merchants’ at the
port of Rome in 192 B.c.;!° Strabo saying that the wool of the plain of
the Po and of Liguria ‘clothes all Italy’;!0 Sicily equipping the Roman
army in go B.c.;!08 Rome itself an important textile centre in ¢. 150 and in
¢. 53 B.C.109

(b) We are a great deal better informed about the mines of Italy and
Spain, with famous descriptions from Polybius, Diodorus, Strabo and
Pliny. The big exploitation was in Spain, beginning with the area round
New Carthage (argentiferous lead) from the beginning of the second
century.!!0 Polybius is already talking of 40,000 workers!!! in that region
in Carthaginian times; and he says that the revenue ‘to the Romans’ (i.e.
from ¢. 200 to 150 B.C.) was 25,000 drachmae a day.!!2 Archaeological
study of the mines and of the ingots found ¢# situ or in wrecks!!3 shows
that exploitation of the mines of the centre and south-west only really
began at the end of the second century B.c. and culminated about the end

102 Cic. Rab. Post. 20; Pis. 87. 103 Healy 1978 (G 115) fig. 28.

104 Fg. Roman aqueducts in Frontin. Aq., passin.

105 Torelli 1980 (G 244); Coarelli 1977 (G 42). 19 Livy xxxv.qi.10. 107 Serab. v.n.12.

108 Cic. un Verr. 2.5. 109 Cato, Agr. 135, Cic. Rab. Post. go.

0 The gold mines of Lusitania and the north west were not reached till the time of Augustus.
1) ap, Serab. 1.2.10. Perhaps not all mine-workers, though.

"2 The drachma may be equated with the denarius.

113, Of 250 ingots found, 200 are Republican in date.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

626 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133743 B.C.

of the first. An important fact about it is that the exploitation was the
work of immigrants from Italy!!4 and Rome, whatever the fiscal or
concessionary regime that governed it.'!5 Italy, therefore, for metal for
coinage and industry, was largly an importer; yet, whether directly or
otherwise, Italy owned the mines by right of conquest, so they were a
source of wealth, not an item of expense.

(c) A third sector of great importance is building construction and
public works. It is linked to the growth of the cities, especially Rome,
from the early second century, and the general urbanization of Italy at
the end of the second century‘and during the first.!6 That necessarily
gave rise to a huge demand for housing; and, if most houses were of poor
construction, the continual collapses and fires gave opportunity for even
more building activity, sometimes in the hands of speculators like M.
Crassus, who employed great numbers of workmen, slave and free.!!”
And the growth of cities and of mass demand was accompanied by
increased demand for luxury residences, the aedes and rural villae of the
aristocracy, influenced by Hellenistic fashiom.!!8 The ‘building mania’ of
senators and equites, even of nouveaux riches like Sulla’s soldiers and
centurions, who, having received rural allotments, wanted to live in
town and ‘build’, is well attested in the sources.!!9 It is evident that all
that activity involved transport to Rome on a vast scale, and the growth
of specialized enterprises and of large gangs of workmen, slave or free.
And to private construction we must add public building, which
flourished all through the second and first centuries. There was perhaps a
‘bulge’ in 194-174, with the fitting out of the port of Rome and the big
warehouses, another in 144-136 with the Agua Marcia, and a series of
encroachments on the Campus Martius, first in 110-106 and then in the
Gos with the great benefactions of the political bosses, Scaurus, Pompey,
Julius Caesar and others. The few figures for expenditure given in the
sources,!20 including the cost of the Agua Marcia at 45 million denarii,
confirmed by calculations of the size of coin emissions,!2! suffice to show
the importance of the sums involved, which went on to irrigate vast
sectors of economic life. We guess — rather than really know — how this
world of enterprise worked: companies taking up, from the state,
contracts to do the work, more or less like the publicani; architects;
middlemen with capital to lend and forming associations to do it (or to
borrow); agents for hire of labour, free or slave; and finally, we may be
sure, a mass of small craftsman institores, free or slave, making their living

4 Diod. v.36.3. 45 See further below, p. 635.
N6 Vier. 1.8.17; Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.96; Frontin. Ag. 1.7.
"7 Plut. Crass. 2.5. "8 Coarelli 1976 (G 41).

"9 Cic. Caf. 11.20; cases have been listed, at least for senators: Shatzman 1975 (a 112).
120 Livy xx.46.16 and 5 1.2-7; XLIV.16.9-11.
121 Although military expenses were the main factor in that.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

COMMERCE AND MONEY 627

from the whole whirligig of enterprise. The origins of the funds that
went into these works are interesting to study in detail; often public
monies of the Roman treasury, when it was gorged with the acquisitions
of conquest; sometimes costs passed on to property-owners who
benefited, as for the maintenance of the streets of Rome (from at least 75
B.c.) and of certain public roads; but often also private funds furnished
by magistrates wishing to gain popularity by good works, or generals
spending their wanubiae, or just private individuals who had had a stroke
of luck, like the oil-merchant who dedicated the temple of Hercules
Victor in the Forum Boarium.!22

(d) The ceramic industry (in the broad sense: tiles, bricks, amphorae,
as well as cups and plates) is only just beginning, thanks to archaeology,
to receive the attention it deserves. Amongst the numerous Italian
centres of production Rome itself begins to emerge in a preponderant
role. The staggering accumulation of sherds of the Monte Testaccio, !23
corroborated by the thousands of tons of sherds dredged from the
Sadne,!24 confirms the quantitative importance of the production of
wine and oil amphorae for long-distance transport.!25 We now know
that it was Italian amphorae — first from the Adriatic coast and Apulia,
later from Campania and the coast of Etruria — that accompanied the
Italian wines that went to Spain, Gaul, and even the East, Delos for
example. Whether they were actually produced by the owners of the
vineyards, by nearby producers, or by urban manufacturers does not
matter: the overall profit must have been considerable. Even more so for
luxury wares (‘Campanian’, Roman, Arretine finally in the age of
Augustus), produced in large quantities for an export market deter-
mined, perhaps, more by the tastes of émigré Italians, civil and military,
than of the locals. Here, too, recent research may now enable us to
discern the organization of the trade and its labour-force.!2

IV. COMMERCE AND MONEY

Italian argriculture and industry, then, underwent, in the second and
first centuries B.C., pari passu with Rome’s conquests, considerable
change and expansion. Those changes and that expansion cannot be
understood except in relation to the methods and channels of exchange
that made them possible. Rome had certainly been a centre of production
and exchange much earlier than used to be generally allowed — from the
end of the fourth century; nevertheless ‘commerce’ and ‘finance’,

'22 On the building programme as a kind of ‘manna’ for the people, see Plut. C. Gracch. 6-7.
'23 Dating from the Principate, it is true. 124 Tchernia 1969 (G 237).

125 And dolia for storage of cereals.

126 Pucci 1973 (G 198); Delplace 1978 (G 55).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

628 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

whatever their specific modalities and characteristics, were, from the
middle of the second century, along with conquest itself, the very
hallmark by which outsiders recognized Romans and Italians. Mer-
chants and businessmen from abroad coming to Rome to look after their
public and private interests; Roman bankers, businessmen, publicani,
turning up in Spain, Narbonensis, Illyria, at Delos or in Asia (soon even
in Egypt): these are the sign of the change in the scale and radius of
commerce as well as, doubtless, its volume. And these quantitative
changes, linked to world conquest, were accompanied by deep qualita-
tive ones as well. For the first time the processes of exchange were
beginning to unify all across the then world, and to even out under the
effect of acommon currency, a common tax system and a common legal
order: that process was only just beginning, of course, in our period, and
was destined to take centuries to develop and undergo many a vicissi-
tude; all the more interesting is it to discern some of the vital factors in
the process at their very inception.

1. The technical underpinning

All commercial development presupposes an adequate technical basis,
material (transport, roads, wagon teams, ports, ships, etc.) and non-
material (money, accounting, commercial law, etc.). In all these spheres
Italy — and Rome — is to be placed firmly in the context of Greek and
Hellenistic practice; for it was the Greeks who had brought such
techniques to a high pitch of efficiency in the eastern Mediterranean by
the middle of the second century B.C. So let us assert, once for all: the
ships, harbours, coinage, financial and juridical structures of the Romans
were not fundamentally different from those of the Greeks, but just a
variant. When insistence is presently laid on differences they will be
differences of detail, though it is just those detailed differences that are
significant. We may therefore be very brief in recalling some general
points.

The Roman road system was regarded under the Empire as the very
hallmark of the pax Romana.!2? It was already there in essence in the
second century B.C., in Italy down to the south and Brundisium and up to
the plain of the Po, and in the provinces the va Domitia in Gaul and the
via Egnatia from Dyrrachium to the Hebrus. That the roads contributed
to bring regions out of isolation and accelerate contacts may well be true;
but they remained essentially strategic and official.!28 Land transport
used pack animals more than wagons, because the defective technique of
harnessing was one of the biggest obstacles to development in the

7 Pliny HN xxvm.3. 128 Cic. Prov. Cons. 31.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

COMMERCE AND MONEY 629

ancient economy: land transport remained, in fact, slow and costly, and
so was reserved mainly for military operations, and the commerce of the
age rested almost entirely on maritime transport — which accorded in any
case with the nature of Mediterranean geography. There was little
technical progress in this regard during our period. The Romans never
went through the megalomaniac stage in shipbuilding like the Hellenis-
tic monarchs. However, as we are beginning to learn, commercial vessels
were actually bigger on average and better built and more manoeuvrable
than used to be thought, as can be seen from the extension of the routes:
along the Tyrrhenian coast, the coasts of Gaul and Spain, between
Brundisium and Dyrrachium, Delos and Asia, Rhodes and Egypt, there
was now a sailing programme that transcended mere land-hugging.
(True, they were still obeying the rule of the winter close season, and the
big convoys — the ‘Alexandrian fleet’!29 — are a later development.)
Evidence accumulates in the wrecks located by underwater archaeo-
logy:'30 their number rises notably in the second and first centuries B.c.!31
A hundred or two hundred trips a year will have been needed to carry the
50,000—100,000 hectolitres of Italian wine that went to Gaul between 150
and 50 B.c.!32 Equally, the carriage of the corn — whether tax-corn or
free-market corn ~ imported in growing quantities to Rome and Puteoli
from 123 B.C, at least, first from Sicily, Sardinia and Spain,'33 subse-
quently from Africa, Asia, and finally Egypt, involved sizeable merchant
fleets, regulated by government for the first time in 57 under Pompey’s
cura annonae and then supported and ultimately organized more and more
closely.

We shall return below to the economic organization, properly
speaking, of this maritime traffic: for the moment let us just note that the
political policy of states, especially Rome, helped to furnish for it two
major and indispensable technical supports: new harbours, and freedom
of navigation.

As to the first, the salient fact is the big development of the port of
Rome, on the Tiber, at the foot of the Capitol, Palatine and Aventine,
from early in the second century B.c. but especially between 193 and 174;
by the end it extended more than z kilometres, and on both banks. The
size of the warehouses like the Porticus Aemilia (487 x 60 metres) is
significant — equally so the first Roman horrea, the Horrea Galbana or
Sulpicia, Horrea Sempronia for example. The port of Rome is of course
linked to that of Ostia: the latter, in the second and first centuries B.c.,
was still a river port: ships up to 3,000 amphorae could get in there, !34
and even perhaps up to Rome. But probably the silting that made the

129 Suet. Aug. 98.2. 130 Developed mainly in the western Mediterranean.
13) Parker 1984 (G 187). 132 Tchernia 1969 (G 237) 7o.
133 Cic. Leg. Man. 30. 14 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 111.44.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

630 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

crossing of the bar hazardous had begun to menace Ostia already by the
end of the century.!35 In the rest of Italy there were two profound
changes in our period: the decline of Tarentum and Naples to the
advantage of Brundisium and, especially, Puteoli. The former was the
road terminus and sea crossing-point for Dyrrachium and the V7a
Egnatia, ‘invented’ by Rome,!6 the latter had a co/onia settled in 194 and
customs installed in 199. Polybius, Lucilius and Diodorus are witness!37
to Puteoli being the ‘premier port of Italy’, a ‘baby Delos’; and its
connexions with Tyre and Alexandria are already attested for the second
century — also with Spain and Sicily.!38 Puteoli profited from the decline
of Delos after 88 B.c., especially for the slave trade and the grain trade:
this latter seems to have been the most characteristic interest of the
Puteolans in Cicero’s time.!%°

The problem of ‘freedom of the seas’ met with a less clear-cut
response. For piracy was not only endemic in our period, at least in
certain areas like Illyria, Crete and Cilicia - a hindrance to normal
commerce and combated, as far as international conflicts allowed, by the
interested powers, notably Rhodes.!4° It happened also to be at times the
principal supplier of a commodity much in demand — slaves, and was
consequently sometimes tolerated, within limits, certainly so at times of
conflict or of rising demand. Only in about 100 B.c., and then more
firmly in 74~—66, did Rome decide to intervene against the Cretan pirates
and then the Cilicians, the latter in the huge, successful campaign
entrusted to Pompey; they did so only when insecurity had become
intolerable and had reached the very coast of Latium. Even after that, the
war against Sextus Pompeius, 41-36 B.c., could be represented by
Octavian as a ‘pirate war’. Full freedom of the seas was only assured from
Augustus onwards: slaves then came from elsewhere, Gaul and the
Danube regions.

2. Money

But of all the technical underpinnings of commerce, from the sixth
century B.c. at least, the most important was, of course, money.!4!

135 Serab. 1.5.231-2. 136 Zonar. vi11.7.3.

137 Polyb. r1.91.4; Lucilius m.123; Diod. v.13.2.

138 Spain: Strab. 11.2.6, 144; Sicily: Cie. m Verr. 5.154.

139 The Avianii, Cic. Acad. 11.80.

140 Which ‘gave its laws to the sea’, as they still said in the time of the Antonines, D.14.2.9,
Volusius Maecianus.

'4t The ancient world, certainly from Aristotle on, knew quite well the immense role the
invention of money played in the passage from barter to sale, by giving a measure of value.
Although money was metal, and so had a market value of its own, its coining by states turned it into
a guaranteed conventional measure to express the exchange value of things other than itself. Arist.
Pol. 1257a.34; Paul in D.18.1.1 (with Nicolet 1984 (G 177) 105ff).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

COMMERCE AND MONEY 631

Rome’s monetary system was a late arrival; it was definitively reorga-
nized in 212/11 B.C. with the introduction of the silver denarius reckoned
at 10 bronze asses, and it remained fundmentally bimetallic (apart from a
few brief strikings of gold, in 212/11 and under Sulla) down to Julius
Caesar. Its detailed history — the successive weight reductions of the as,
the weight and fineness of the denarius, the occasional emission of silver
sesterces (always in times of war), is very varied and complex and cannot
be gone into here.!42 We can do no more than bring out a few strictly
economic features, while admitting that this is a field more for hypoth-
eses than for certitudes.

Like most of the peoples of Italy, the Romans began with a bronze
coinage: it is in units of bronze that the census classes were expressed and
the earliest taxes perhaps paid. The Romans only adopted, and then
themselves coined, silver money about the time of Pyrrhus, to pay
military expenses in the south of Italy (i.e. in the Greek world). Only ¢.
212/11 was the silver piece, the denarius, more or less equivalent to a
drachma, put into relationship with the bronze system; after which,
while the denarius remained remarkably stable in weight and fineness
(except in some temporary crises such as, perhaps, in 91-85) the bronze
coins went down and down and ended as small change for everyday use:
the unit of measure, the as, which still weighed a pound as late as 218 B.C.,
finished by weighing only half a ounce, ¢. 91 B.c. The more important
transactions, official payments and balances, were all done in silver,
denarii mainly but victoriati (half-denarii at the end of the Republic) and
sestertii (quarter-denarii) in certain regions like the Cisalpina or special
situations such as wars. Even then, it should be noted that to pay in cash
the price of an upper-class house, say 4 million sesterces (normal in the
first century B.c.) would have involved moving four tonnes of silver.
Hence the role of gold in bars, in the reserves of the aerarium or of private
individuals, as a means of coping with really large payments.!43

Our period is marked by two very large-scale phenomena. The first is
the spread of the Roman denarius all over the Mediterranean world,
above all in Greece and Asia, but even outside the frontiers, in Dacia, for
example.!44 The spread was slow at first, but picked up speed at the
beginning of the first century. The Roman unit of accounting, the
sestertius, also tended to be used everywhere. Doubtless, independent
local issues survived all over the place, even in Italy, where it was a
privilege of some cities; but many such issues were aligned to the Roman
metrological values, while others, minted by Roman governors, like the
cistophori of Asia and the coins of Macedon, were also obviously linked to

142 See Crawford 1974 (B 144).
443 Cie. Clu. 179; Rab. Post. 47; Phil. 1.10; Att. x11.6.1.
144 Linked to the slave-trade, about 67-50 B.c.?

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

632 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

the fiscal and monetary system of Rome. Also it is very possible that as
the Romans came to dominate great areas they at first used the local
coinages for their own purposes — those of the Spanish cities, Massilia,
Athens, Rhodes, and so on.'45 There remained, still, some areas outside
the system, Syria and Egypt, and, even within the empire, some
provinces, Sicily, Greece and Asia: money-changing went on being
essential for long-distance commerce. But the monetary unification of
the Mediterranean was coming into being, and part, at least, of the
circulation of coin, that which concerned fiscal relations and the official
expenditure of the state, was more and more standardized.

The second major phenomenon, stark and incontestable, is the
growth in the sheer quantity of Roman coins in circulation. The methods
we employ to estimate that are, it must be allowed, uncertain: we study
the number of dies per issue; but how many coins does that represent? Or
we try to work from estimates of total annual state expenditure.
Nevertheless, the general tendency is certain: the Roman coinage of
some years was greater by itself than, for example, the whole of the
‘second style’ Athenian coinage from ¢. 170 to 70 B.c.,!# and although
there was a cessation of striking from 167 to 157, due doubtless to the
influx of booty to the aerarium, from c. 140-130 down to ¢. 90 B.c. the
amounts struck annually increased more than five times!47 and settled
down, for thirty years, at a very high level. This continued injection of
new coined money cannot have failed to have economic consequences;
but there remain a lot of things not yet understood. The striking of coins
was evidently linked to the purposes of the aerarium, and evidently
served to meet with new coinage the expenses of the state, which were
primarily military (though not exclusively so: from 123 and then from 58
we must take into account the supplying of grain, first subsidized and
then gratis, and we must not forget public works). But did the state
always pay out in new coin? And what exactly came into the aerarium? The
replies to those questions are by no means evident, either for the product
of the regular taxation (what coinage was it paid in?), or for booty, or for
the product of the mines of Macedon or Spain (did they send metal to
Rome in ingots, or was a monetary equivalent paid in?). We do know for
certain that individuals could be in account with the aerarium, but only
on the basis of taxes or public works, for the state never borrowed nor
lent. Could individuals be in account with the mint? There was certainly
no private striking of coinage: but could you deposit money with the
mint?!48 Could you offer it ingots? That is very doubtful, though you
could certainly get it to change bronze for silver at the official rate. What

43. Such is the hypothesis of Crawford.

14% Crawford 1985 (B 145). 147, Hopkins 1980 (G 124) 109.
148 Cic. Ast, viit.7.3 and xv.15.1; not very explicit.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

COMMERCE AND MONEY 633

can, anyhow, be taken as certain is that, even if the issues of coin decided
on by government were mainly intended to meet state expenses, and the
decisions were made in concert with the aerarium, the money very
quickly got into general circulation and irrigated and animated the entire
economy.

It has been doubted, quite rightly, whether the Roman government
ever had an exact concept of the ‘monetary needs of the economy’, and
whether coinage was ever intended for anything but the meeting of the
state’s expenditure. Nevertheless, decisions — or non-decisions — about
weights and fineness, or the offical tariff of silver and bronze, could have
enormous effects on commerce and on economic and social life in
general. All those problems might converge at times of monetary crisis,
which sometimes coincided with political crises, as in 92-86 B.c.: we get
the creation of the semiuncial as, the Lex Livia of 91 concerning the
alloying of metals,'4° the edict of Marius Gratidianus, which probably
settled the fluctuating silver—bronze tariff;!5° all those things posed a
threat, at least in Rome, to the stability of very big financial deals. It is
also certain that the problem of debt, about which there will be more to
say, had specifically monetary aspects: the fact that rich landed proprie-
tors might be in debt shows that there was a shortage of liquid funds to
go round. Since, however, there was a general increase in the amount of
coinage struck, yet, as far as one can tell, no spectacular inflation at the
end of the second century and during the first, it seems to follow that
production and exchange must have grown more or less pari passu
during the period, though we do not know the history of prices well
enough to be altogether sure.

Atany rate, the manipulation of money certainly became an important
phenomenon in economy and society during our period — linked, of
course, to the development of financial interests in general. It is towards
the end of the second century that the tesserae nummulariae appear: seals,
dated and named, recording the verification by professionals (slaves) of
the contents of sacks of coin belonging to individuals or companies.
They are evidence that such people or groups owned, or had charge of,
big sums of money; and the names can be related to those of Italian
businessmen at Delos and in the East and to monetary officials and
publicani and big landed proprietors.!5! At the same time we begin to
encounter evidence of the different kinds of professionals involved with
money:!52 money-changers, nummularii, at Praeneste and of course at
Rome, bankers proper, the argentarii, who took deposits and lent money,

49 If that is what it was, Pliny HN xxxii.132.

1580 Crawford 1968 (c 45); Seager in ch. 6 above, pp. 180-1.

St Herzog 1919 (G 119) and 1937 (G 120); Andreau 1987 (G 6).
182 Blaborately distinguished by Andreau 1987 (c 6).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

634 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

auctioneers (sales at auction being common), who were prosperous
enough to bea source of short-term credit for small-scale businesses. But
the most characteristic feature of the whole society is the existence of a
big turn-round of money amongst the upper classes, Senate and equites at
Rome and the curial class in the municipia. More or less everybody was
borrowing, lending, pledging, buying and selling real estate; and the size
of the sums involved rose in line with the growth of private fortunes.
There is need of a detailed analysis of the purposes of these transactions:
in the case of the upper classes, no doubt most of them were to help
maintain a standard of living fraught with innumerable social obli-
gations and demanding an ostentatious lifestyle — slaves, houses,
political funds, benefactions. But we shall see, before we have finished,
that some strictly economic goals could also be the object of these
financial dealings.

Was there such a thing as ‘Roman banking’ in our period, and, if so,
what role did it play? It was limited, to begin with, by technical
inadequacies and by the strait-jacket of legal rules. Transfers of credit
existed: you could pay a third party through your banker or through a
personal friend with whom you held a deposit or who would give you
credit. The transfer of specie about the Mediterranean could be avoided
by making a permutatio, a written draft, but that fell short of being a bill of
exchange.!53 The transfer of book-debts, novatio and delegatio, was costly,
because of its slowness, and complicated.'54 Consequently, there was
nothing like a real ‘money market’ (although, of course, if a number of
big lenders failed, as they did in 85 and 66 and might have done in 63, the
peril could spread and endanger ‘the whole Forum’).!55 We hear, indeed,
of ‘bankers’: at Delos, Syracuse, Rhegium, Volaterrae, Puteoli, Rome.
But their economic role is unclear. The lenders of money amongst the
governing class, like Considius or Atticus!5¢ no doubt had as customers
not only noble senators but tradesmen and artisans too: but in what
proportion? What characterizes Rome is individual rather than corpor-
ate financial activity: the legal rules, indeed, imposed it. There were no
big banking societates, as far as we know, and there was no state bank.!57
But that was offset by the existence of the upper-class financiers: in spite
of the disapproval visited by law and society upon gain, quaestus, and still
more upon lending at interest, it looks as if!58 the Roman governing
class, for all that their property was in land and their supposed role
military and civic, was also a financial class — bankers and money-lenders

1583, And there were no settlement days or banker’s commissions.

34 Cic. Att. xu1.33 12; 46.

155 Cic. Leg. Man. 17-20.

156 Whose probity was highly regarded: that of his uncle Q. Caecilius less so.

187 Such as some Greek states did have.
158 It is not quite certain.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

COMMERCE AND MONEY 635

and slave-dealers, distinguished only by the veil of hypocrisy from the
mercantile aristocracies of Carthage or of Venice.

3. Economic structures of commerce and industry

The Romans, like the Greeks, had partnership, sociefas, the grouping of
persons for a gainful purpose.!5° Its rules were gradually fixed by the
private law; they remained formalistic and limiting. The societas was
limited in time, being dissolved automatically by the death of a partner
(unless the whole partnership was formally renewed); and limited
liability had not been invented, so every partner was liable in full up to
the limit of all he possessed. The law also fixed certain rights of partners,
for example, a remarkable novelty of the time of Ser. Sulpicius Rufus,
that there could be unequal shares of profit and loss for the sake of a
partner whose contribution lay not in supplying but in doing some-
thing.'6° Many of the partnerships of which we hear, even for the mines
in Spain, consisted of only two or three partners, often linked by family
or clientela (freedmen, co-freedmen, etc.), which naturally limited their
financial scale. However, there were two notable exceptions.

(a) First, partnerships for maritime commerce. Some were involved in
the ownership or renting and the exploitation of ships; others, techni-
cally more interesting, were concerned with bottomry (frasecticia pecunia,
faenus nauticum), a curious contract, half sleeping-partnership and half
insurance. A plurality of persons could insure a single cargo, or split
their stake between several vessels. Cato, we know, was engaging ina
bottomry contract already ¢. 160 B.c.!61 Senators and equites could own
ships.!62 They normally entrusted the management to an exercitor,
though there was nothing to stop the owner doing it himself. But the
partnerships for the purchase and equipping of ships and purchase of
cargo were still, in the Republican age, governed by the limiting rules,
personal and short-term, of the ordinary commercial societas.

(b) The second great exception was the societates publicanorum, the most
considerable financial organizations known to the Roman world and
perhaps to the whole of antiquity. Their activities and their status
depended, of course, primarily on their relation to public finance, to the
system of taxation; but their — by definition — semi-private character had
economic implications. First, the sums involved were very large indeed:
the capital that had to be assembled in advance either to furnish security
(for the publicani had to contract to pay the government in advance the

159 More or less any lawful purpose, e.g. running an elementary school, D.17.2.71 pr.

160 D.17.2.30; Gaius 111.149; C.J. 3.25. 161 Plut. Cat. Mai. 21.

162 The Sestii of Cosa; Domitius Ahenobarbus (perhaps); Rabirius Postumus. On the Lex
Claudia, see D’Arms 1981 (G 50) 31-9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

636 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C,

tax they were going to collect) or, in the case of public works or military
supplies, to be granted the licence to undertake the contract, was quite
beyond the scale of individual fortunes. Hence, from early on, the
grouping into partnerships: in 215 B.C. there were nineteen people in five
partnerships for supplying the armies in Spain.'6 Originally, the
partnerships of the publicani were probably of the ordinary legal kind, but
about the end of the second century B.c. some of them — for the vectigalia
and the mines — changed in character and scale, on the initiative of the
state. The change of character was that they became ‘anonymous’,
carrying only the title of their object (‘customs of Sicily’, ‘mines of
Hispalis’, ‘decuma of Asia’, and so on), thus having a collective existence
separate from that of the individual partners, and that they became
‘permanent’, i.e. for the duration of their contract with the state, so that
the death of a partner did not dissolve them. It is probable that one could
have partes, transmissible shares, in them! more easily than in ordinary
partnerships. Secondly, change of scale: their organization was complex
and sophisticated; they were like a state in miniature, ‘ad speciem rei
publicae’, with a common chest, a representative in dealings with the
state (manceps, actor), presidents (magistri) and provincial managers
(promagistri), a General Meeting,'® slaves, employees, troops, buildings
at Rome!® and in the provinces, boats, postmen, and so on. It is true that
between one censorial /ustrum and the next these sociefates might close,
reopen, merge;'®” but mostly they just went on.'68 Now, however rich
may have been the equites who were normally the shareholders and
directors of these firms, when it came to guaranteeing to the state, for
five years, the estimated tax revenue of an entire province such as Asia or
Bithynia, the resources needed were immense, and must have involved
calling, whether legitimately or clandestinely, upon the fortunes of very
many other people — landed proprietors, merchants, senators even
(through men of straw). And it would have been useless to call upon
them unless the expected profits, however narrowly limited by the state,
had been worth having. In addition, the publicani, as firms but also as
individuals, engaged in other types of financial and commercial activity
on the side: deposit banking for private clients (including provincial
governors); slave-dealing; trade in luxury items;!© advancing to local
communities, at usurious rates, the money they were going to have to
pay in tax (very typical, that); farming local taxes, and so on. (The
abstention of Atticus from such activities is exceptional.) It can — unless
subsequent research should show otherwise — be taken as the case that
financial activities of the above kind, semi-public and linked to the fruits

163 Livy xx111.49.1. 16 Whether negotiable is a moot point.
168 Cic. mn Verr. 2.173. 166 Vitr. v1.5.2. 167 Cic. Fam. xit.g.
168 Cic. Leg. Man. 18. 169 Rabirius Postumus in Egypt in 54 B.c.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

COMMERCE AND MONEY 637

of conquest, mobilized a large fraction of the resources of the Roman
governing class, because of the high profits and because of the scale of
operations, which was more or less the whole budget of the Roman
Republic. Much more was to be got out of this than out of ordinary
commercial or industrial activity (not but what they engaged in that,
too). But we must not forget the effects of legal and social bias: no
senator (and perhaps no eques not resident in Rome) could be a publicanus,
nor could any freedman,'” so naturally the one class went into landed
property and the other into commercial and manufacturing enterprises.
Nevertheless, the only ‘big business houses’ the ancient world knew
were — and it is symbolic — the state revenue collectors.

4. Summing-up

Let us finally attempt to encapsulate the changes that the Roman
conquest of the Mediterranean produced in commerce and the transfer
of resources (for a balance of payments it cannot be called).

The first incontestable fact is the establishment of a whole new map of
production, consumption and exchange, by means of the rapid integ-
ration of zones hitherto politically distinct (Africa, for example, and
Gaul, first Narbonensis and then the rest), and by the creation of organic
links between Italy and the Aegean and Asia and, finally, Egypt. That
process coincided with a vital new fact: round about 116 B.c. Eudoxus of
Cyzicus, a Greek captain in the service of the Ptolemies, discovered the
route to India and perhaps the monsoon.!7! And in the north also new
routes opened: the conquest of Gaul brought in the tin of Britain, and
from Aquileia went up, to the Alpine regions rich in iron (Noricum), the
wine and pottery of Italy.

Within the Mediterranean basin itself new routes and new axes
emerged. Puteoliand Rome on the west coast of Italy and Brundisium on
the east coast welcomed goods, and people, from Greece, Asia, the East,
Egypt. Most of the old ports of call changed: Carthage and Corinth were
brutally eliminated in 146 B.c., for political and economic reasons
together, as Cicero stated clearly;!72 Rhodes, not destroyed or systemati-
cally ruined in 167, pace Polybius,'73 was nevertheless subjected to the
severe rivalry of Delos. Delos, though Athenian again from 167, was
declared a free port, and between, say, 130 and 88 B.C. enjoyed a phase of
unheard-of prosperity, attested by literary texts,!’4 archaeology and
epigraphy alike. It was an entrepot and turntable, where people from
every point of the compass settled and organized themselves into
powerful guilds: especially Italians and Romans!” but also, e.g., Syrians,

"10 Cic. Plane. 23; Tac. Ann. 1v.6.3. 1% Strab. 11.3.4,99C. "2 Cic, Leg. Agr. 11.87.
"3 Polyb. xxx. 31. 4 Strab. xtv.5.2. 175 Not only Italian Greeks.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

638 16, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

Phoenicians, Alexandrians. Above all, it was a centre of the slave trade
on a scale that astonished even contemporaries. Delos is not the only
Aegean port where we hear of that kind of concentration of business
activities: the same can be said of Chios, of Ephesus, of Thasos. But
Delos, until its destruction in 88 (followed by the mere ghost of a
restoration ¢. 58-50) was the queen of them all, certainly for slaves,!76
and its veritable aristocracy of bankers and merchants from all over the
world had fruitful connexions, business and political, with the cities of
Italy. The growth of these new commercial axes depended on the
displacement of people, preceding or accompanying the products.
Roman and Italian merchants, bankers, businessmen spread all over the
Mediterranean — to the advantage, of course, of Roman power. The
displacement was hardly ever on a large enough scale to constitute a
whole new population anywhere, save in the Cisalpina, in Narbonensis
and in Spain, but it was a powerful diaspora, the more so because it was a
diaspora of the ruling race: New Carthage, Narbo, Cirta, Utica in the
west; Dyrrachium, Patrae, Thessalonica, Mytilene, Ephesus, Alexandria
even,!77 in the east. The ‘Italians’ on Delos were often from Rome or old
Latium; but Campanians from Puteoli and Nuceria were also powerful
business figures, like the Annii or the famous P. Sittius. Like the English
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Roman entrepreneurs
followed or preceded the armies.

We have described the principal objects of commerce: Italy the
conqueror imported from everywhere, especially luxury goods, more
and more costly, from further and further away: Greek wines, spices,
Alexandrian glassware, eastern fabrics, works of art (this latter a big item
in money terms). But in the second and first centuries B.c. Italy imported
above all two specific products. The first was slaves, captured in war or
bought from venaliciarii, from all over the place, Asia Minor, Bithynia,
Cappadocia, Syria, the Balkans, and finally Gaul. And the second,
especially from 123 B.C., was grain — the tax grain, i.e. not paid for, but
also free market grain, to meet a demand that it was one of government’s
most important tasks to keep regularly supplied. The quantities
involved, which rose as Italian agriculture went over to vines and stock-
raising, were huge, e.g. about 14 million hectolitres a year merely for the
Jrumentatio in the years 58-45 B.c.!78 The centre of this import market for
grain seems to have been Rome itself!79 and Puteoli: it was to merchants
of Puteoli, amongst others, that Pompey turned in 57 when he was
entrusted with the annona. Italy did also export, as we have seen: wine in

176 The ‘agora of the Italians’ was perhaps one of those stataria, slave markets, erected often as
benefactions, in Asia and elsewhere, by Romans.

17 ILS 7273. '78 60 modii (= 4.8 hectolitres) x 320,000 beneficiaries.

179 Furius Flaccus, member of the collegium of the Capitolini and Mercuriales, Cic. OFr. 11.5.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

COMMERCE AND MONEY 639

large quantities, to Spain and Gaul, and (as we are beginning to learn) to
Delos and the East; pottery and oil to Delos and Greece.

But what were the overall terms of the exchange? Given that we have
nothing like customs statistics to go on'8 we cannot draw up a detailed
balance; but the basic global fact we know well enough: the balance of
exchange was wn-equal, because it was largely determined by military and
political conquest and there is, by definition, a deliberate inequality
between the ruling race (in this case all Italy, by before the end of our
period) and its subjects. Fiscal and financial inequality: it was the
provinces — taken as a whole and notwithstanding, of course, a host of
exemptions and special cases — that bore almost alone the burden of
taxation. Taxation began as, and was in principle, a tax in kind on
agricultural wealth, but it was transformed into a prestation in money,
though only slowly: the change had still not entirely happened in Sicily
under Verres, nor in the ‘frumentary’ provinces as a whole even in 58—
57. It goes without saying that a fiscal bite of that size out of the
production of grain had an influence on the ‘free market’. The same is
true of the supply of metal for the coinage: it was not commercial balance
nor payment that fed the Roman mint, but the fact that Rome imposed
the taxes. True, in a period of peace and order, that very system could
carry with it a certain economic equilibrium, for the provincial econo-
mies would have to acquire currency by economic activity in order to
pay their required taxes.!8! But in our period such a mechanism was not
at work: we are still in the age of stark conquest, accentuated by wars,
foreign and civil, and by the uncontrolled exactions of Roman magnates.
Greece and Asia were, between go and 31 B.c., subjected to a fiscal and
monetary squeeze that could not but distort the normal mechanisms of
production and exchange: the indebtedness of Greece, and especially
Asia, during the first half of the first century B.c., unilaterally imposed by
Rome, was an absolute economic cataclysm, as the sources attest:
120,000 talents, i.e. 720 million denarii at compound interest, in 70 B.c. !82
Consequently, as we also know for certain, the provincials had to
borrow at usurious rates from their very creditors, the pablicani and
bankers of Rome, until they were bankrupt or Rome itself called a
moratorium (as occasionally happened). It was these operations rather
than economic operations in the usual sense, with land or commerce or
industry that attracted the Roman capitalists, who were actually,
therefore, a kind of rentiers of the power-structure rather than true men
of commerce. Of course, one must not underestimate true economic

180 Italian portoria did exist down to 60 B.c. and again from 4}, at least on certain ‘foreign goods’,
Suet. Iu/. 43.1.

181 That is perhaps how it worked under the Empire, Hopkins 1980 (G 124).

182 Plut. Lue. 20.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

640 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

production-and-exchange and the role played in it by the Roman
governing and commercial class; but in our period, on balance, it was an
economics of spoliation that prevailed. Consider just two figures,
arbitrary but significant: the 14 million hectolitres of corn distributed in
the year 57 B.c. would, at a market price of three sesterces a modius, come
to 57,600,000 sesterces or near enough 15 million denarii; yet that is
hardly 2 per cent of the sum Asia owed in taxation in 70 B.c.

The provincials, the peregrini, were not deceived: the pillage of the
world by the Romans from 146 B.c. to the end of the civil wars is a
massive economic fact, testified as much by Sallust as by Posidonius or
Agatharchides of Cnidus,'® and illustrated by the ‘lust for gold’ of the
notorious Crassus. Given this brutal and quite un-‘economic’ manner of
enriching themselves, it is difficult to discern anything like an economic
policy of the Roman state in our period. No more commercial treaties (as
with Carthage in an older day); belated efforts, only, to stamp out piracy
and ensure freedom of the seas; absence of any customs policy except as a
way of raising revenue; only, of course, the perpetual seizure of any
advantage or concession in the Roman favour.

When foreign produce like Greek wine or perfume was taxed or
penalized, that was only in the context of traditional sumptuary
legislation: such measures did, of course, have some — unplanned —
economic effects of a secondary sort, but they were not really economic
in character but civic and moralizing and political (and although they
were re-enacted from time to time, the last time by Julius Caesar, their
effectiveness was in any case almost nil). There was, then, no Roman
economic protectionism. The only text that gets, too often, invoked for
this, Cicero, De Republica 1.16 about the ban on planting vineyards
imposed on the ‘Transalpines’, surely does not apply to Gaul, nor to our
period; and the allegedly similar ban by Domitian two centuries later'8*
only proves the perpetual Roman fear of a shortage in the grain supply.

It is only at that elementary level that the ‘economic policy’ of a state
like Rome is to be found: to secure subsistence, to facilitate access to
necessary products (what is ‘necessary’ varying according to class), and
to maintain that degree of general security, and by the least possible
intervention, that suits the ruling race.!85

v. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Such being the economic basis, what were its effects upon social
structures and relationships? The subject would need a chapter to itself:

183 Sall. H. 1v.6om, letter of Mithridates; Diod. 111.47.8. 184 Suet. Dom. 7.2.

\85 A broader vision, adumbrated perhaps by Cicero, only really emerges with Augustus, Nicolet
1988 (G 179) chs. 2 and 3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 641

here we can only fix attention, summarily, on a couple of aspects that
characterize the Roman world as a whole, and our particular period.
First, what is traditionally called the ‘Problem of Debt’ (though it
actually covers a complex range of phenomena). It appears very early in
the Roman annalistic tradition, always linked to violent political and
social conflicts. In those early days it perhaps had a structural aspect,
enslavement and self-enslavement for debt being closely related to the
nature of the work-force on the land. But by the second century B.c. it
had already taken on more ‘modern’ and more strictly economic aspects,
i.e. the borrowing of money, in all its forms. We must try to make some
distinctions. There was, as we have seen, (a) rural indebtedness,
involving the small subsistence owners or tenants — an essential part of
the story of ‘agricultural crisis’, and with two sets of consequences,
either new forms of dependence between the landowner and his colons, or
the flight from the land with its attendant concentration of large estates.
There was, secondly, (b) urban indebtedness. Usury, faenus, is too
common a theme, from at least the time of the elder Cato down to Julius
Caesar and Augustus, and as much in political oratory as in private
documents, for us to doubt that it was built into the structure of the
society. And it has long been observed that the problem of debt
impinged — at certain moments, anyhow, e.g. in 66—63 and 47 B.c. — upon
the governing class itself, the rich, who possessed lands and were
creditors but who also had debts, contracted usually for non-economic
ends, standard of living, building, politics and so on. Was that due toa
lack of liquid cash in the economy? Was it due to the normal income from
rural and urban real estate being too low? Or to inflation in the price of
things they were eager for, like works of art and exotic luxuries? Detailed
studies are needed in this regard. What we can say is that usury did not
profit merely a specialized class: the great faeneratores belonged, them-
selves, to the very same social groups (with some individual variations of
behaviour, as between, for example, Atticus and M. Crassus, which were
a matter of personal moral choice). However, if the movement of money
in this way had only affected this limited upper range of people it would
not have had the cataclysmic consequences that it did have on two or
three occasions: in 92-88, when it provoked monetary legislation, riots
against the judiciary, and new debt regulations; in 66-63, accompanying
the political traumas of the bellum Catilinae; in 48-47 when it more ot less
led to civil war. So, certainly, other social groups and categories besides
the aristocracy were involved; at the lowest level, for example, the very
humble urban plebeians who got into debt in at least one way, over the
rents of their tenements and workshops, so that Julius Caesar in 47 had
to impose a moratorium and then a system of control. And above them
were the small-scale businessmen — artisans, shopkeepers, entrepreneurs

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

642 16. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY, 133-43 B.C.

in a small way, who needed working funds. Now we have already seen
the role (more widespread than is usually thought) of short-term credit,
through auctioneers, in modest current commercial operations: when
political upheavals occurred, with wars, postponement of sailings, and
so on, the indebtedness of this class, too, which archaeology and
epigraphy are showing to have been numerous and diverse, could be
traumatic. Hence the, at first sight, paradoxical link between these
modest and easily ruined urban debtors and some of the big-scale
debtors, who used them to further their own ambitions. Thus, from
Marius Gratidianus to L. Antonius, tribune in 44 B.c., via Catiline and
Caelius Rufus in 48, the economic crises merged with politics.'8° But
with this kind of credit (or usury) who were the creditors? We see them
massacring a praetor in 89,!87 opposing Caelius in 48,'88 honouring L.
Antonius in 4q:!89 they are the ‘money men’ installed in the Forum, ‘in
Iano medio’, grouped into guilds of a sort. They are not the big
capitalists; they are not argentarii in the proper sense; nor are they agents
of the great magnates who are, the while, lending and borrowing whole
fortunes as between each other. They do not seem to be on the same
status level as the Romans in the provinces who lend money, again ona
quite different scale, to the provincial cities and communities. Were they
a class in their own right? It is to them alone that Cicero attributes the
‘science of acquiring and placing money’ in the De Offeiis.!9° Not that we
need doubt that Cato, Crassus, Atticus, P. Sittius, Pompey and Brutus
possessed that same science in equal measure!

For the question whether Roman society was a ‘society of orders’ or a
‘society of classes’, whether, that is, it functioned fundamentally in civic
or in economic structures, is a false dichotomy: like virtually every
society, it operated on several registers. The official social hierarchy was
defined by legal statuses and founded in principle on the individual’s
capacity for public roles: it was, therefore, by definition a ‘society of
orders’, and the aristocracy was a functional aristocracy (patriciate,
nobilitas, Senate, equites). But simultaneously it was a property hierarchy,
because the ‘orders’ were also based ona scale of required wealth. There
were, of old and down at least to 218 B.c., certain incompatibilities,
which banned the functional aristocracy from “chrematistic’ activities —
except agriculture. But the interdiction, more ethical than legal, did not
affect everything: not, for example, commerce in agricultural products,
nor the letting of land or housing. It also tended to lapse into desuetude
and have to be renewed, seldom with much effect. One can, therefore —

\8 An endemic and structural phenomenon down to at least 33 B.C., after which the
overwhelming power and riches of the Princeps brought about other solutions.

187 Livy Per. 74, App. BCiv. 1.54.

188 Caesar, BCiv. 111.21. 189 Nicolet 1985 (C 232). 190 Cic. Off. 11.87.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 643

and people have done so recently — find plenty of cases, especially from
the first century B.C., of senators acting as traders (often selling their own
produce, but not always so), entrepreneurs in building or pottery
production, or proprietors of borrea, which brought in very large sums.
Even the ‘principes viri’, the Crassi and Pompeys and Domitii, were not
above making money in this way, like the duc d’Orléans, whom Louis
XVI called the ‘boutiquier du Palais-Royal’: the owners of big Italian
vineyards, of huge flocks in Apulia or Epirus, of ships at Alexandria or
mines in Spain, could well be counted as men of commerce. But if they
were also senators, magistrates, generals, it was not economic enterprise
that pushed them into that but on the contrary the desire to take their
role in the only official social hierarchy there was. Of course, they could
often use the ‘pull’, or the legitimate powers, of their status as, for
example, senators for the advancement of their commercial interests (by
such things as the /ibera /egatio, in principle not allowed), but their status
did not depend on those commercial interests. It was not, in our period, a
matter of mere title, but corresponded to the exercise of actual military,
political and social functions, so that the economic activities did not tend
to eliminate the old society of orders but fitted into it, while the society of
orders! in its turn adapted itself to the new economic parameters: it was
never eliminated during the whole of Rome’s history.

191 Which Augustus actually reactivated.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 17

THE CITY OF ROME AND THE PLEBS
URBANA IN THELATE REPUBLIC

NICHOLAS PURCELL

For people are the City, not the houses or the
porticoes or the fora empty of men
(Dio Lvr.5.3)

It is said that Caligula’s exasperated wish was that the people of Rome
had only a single neck. That they had a single — and very strongly felt —
collective identity is, by contrast, our historical problem. Urban popula-
tions at all periods suffer from being treated corporately — as the demos,
the many, the mob, the multitude, the masses: under such concepts a
sneer lies close below the surface, and the dehumanizing effect of the
collective designation has never lost its political point. The difficulty is
particularly acute in the case of ancient Rome. The population in
question was very large (though for reasons that we shall see, quantifica-
tion poses serious problems, not just of evidence). Secondly, the Roman
elite had every reason to develop the vocabulary of disdain, and has
processed almost all the information we possess. Thirdly, there were
indeed ways in which the p/ebs Romana was in reality a corporate entity,
and really did cohere as a collectivity, so even when the dismissive
perceptions of ancient aristocrats have been allowed for, our analysis stil]
has to penetrate an institutional fagade before it can depict and explain
the differentiations within the Roman populace.

Our subject-matter in this chapter is the resident population of the city
of Rome; but there are two other collectivities that need to be
distinguished. The first, the pl/ebs urbana, was a subset of the urban
population, it comprised the Roman citizens resident in the city who
were not members of the senatorial or equestrian census-categories: it
excluded slaves and foreigners (peregrini). The second, the populus
Romanus, was the sum of all Roman citizens of whatever status
everywhere.

The populus Romanus and the plebs urbana were in early Roman history
very nearly co-extensive, but as Rome was involved in increasingly far-
flung theatres of activity and new citizens outside Rome were included
within the body politic, they became widely separated. The populus

644

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 645

Romanus had had from an early date an important practical and
theoretical standing in the Roman state, producing what could be
regarded as a spectacular example of a mixed constitution.! Since the
political function of the body of ordinary Romans could usually take
place only at Rome, and since logistics often made attending Rome
regularly to use the vote inconvenient or impossible, the constitutional
role of the populus to an important extent devolved on the plebs urbana and
gave it its considerable self-awareness and sense of cohesion. The
broadening of the populus Romanus, which cannot be discussed in detail
here, was thus paralleled by an evolution of the p/ebs urbana as such into a
significant constitutional, social and political entity. It is the later stages
of this development, from the second century s.c. until the sole
ascendancy of Augustus, that will concern us in this chapter.

The constitutional origins of the position of the populus Romanus, and
so of the plebs, were reflected in some of the more important features of
its Organization. One is the concept, profitably stressed in recent
discussions of the subject, of ‘registeredness’, a system of recording,
docketing and assessing the precise place, in a hierarchy of means and
status, of all citizens. The registered individual citizen was the basic unit
of the plebs urbana, and the precision of the registration, the product of
the census, was something which the Romans themselves perceived as
unusual among states. Secondly, the citizen acted as a member of various
assemblies, principally the legislative assembly of the ¢ribus (formerly
territorial divisions), and the elective assembly based on the (basically
military) organization of the centuriae. Although the individual citizen’s
position in either was, for various reasons, hardly influential in a
democratic sense, the precise management of both assemblies was a
matter of intense political controversy. Already in the third century B.c.
a major adjustment to the centuriate assembly had given more influence
in it to the plebs; but the membership of the ¢ribus never ceased to cause
problems when it came to incorporating new citizens.?

Alongside the political assemblies a prominent place must be assigned
to the contiones, public meetings at which the citizenry was addressed by
the magistrates, and the gatherings of citizens for religious observances
or the military muster. Collective behaviour of various kinds was an

' Place of the plebs in the Roman constitution: Millar 1984 (a 75); Millar 1986 (c 113);
controversial observations in Finley 1983 (A 32) 56-8, 89. Mixed constitution: von Fritz 1954 (a 36).
Sce also Hoffman~Siber 1957 (G 122); Prugni 1987 (G 197); K. A. Raaflaub, ed., Social Struggles in
Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Struggle of the Orders (Berkeley, 1986) 1-51.

2 Basic account of the citizen within the constitution: Nicolet 1980 (a 82) esp. ch. 7. Working of
the assemblies: Taylor 1966 (F 157). Reform of the comitia centuriata in third century: Grieve 1985 (F
70). Numbers voting: MacMullen 1980 (G 150). Tribes: Taylor 195 2~4 (G 236); Taylor 1960 (PF 156);
Nicolet 1985 (c 232).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

646 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

integral part of the experience of citizen life at Rome, and there is
observable a gradual transition from the assemblies which were part of
the machinery of state to less structured manifestations of the general
will. Only in relatively recent years has serious attention been given to
the informal politics of the Roman ‘mob’, but it is a subject which closely
reflects the double nature of the life of the city: on the one hand this
political activity was a regular aspect of the behaviour of the p/ebs urbana
in the strict sense — the Roman citizens in the capital; on the other it was
the characteristic of a rather different social phenomenon, the city
population as a whole, with its (by the late Republic) very large numbers
of slaves and foreigners.3

The barrier between the citizen and the non-citizen, between the p/ebs
urbana and the rest of the city population, was partly blurred and
obscured by the ambiguity of status of the newly enfranchised, both the
manumitted slave and the favoured foreigner; this ambiguous category
and its behaviour are central to the understanding of the life of the city in
the late Republic. Cicero makes the point for us, disjoining the urban
populace, tainted by servility and poverty, from the respectable political
concept of the populus Romanus: ‘or do you really suppose that the Roman
People is that body composed of those who are contracted for a wage? of
slaves, hirelings, criminals and paupers?”4

The other defining barrier around the p/ebs urbana, separating it from
all the other low-status citizens in the populus Romanus, potentially a
geographically based distinction, was made equally unclear by the
difficulty of defining the city of Rome spatially. Boundaries such as the
walls or the limits of the ager Romanus, the old territory, on one view, of
the Roman city state, had little social reality: the Romans themselves
were impelled to evolve a concept of the city as ‘built-up area’, continentia
aedificia, during the period dealt with here, because of the difficulty of
defining either the population as a social group, or the city, in terms of
boundaries.5

So no account will be neatly bounded; an ‘archaeological’ view of the
city and its inhabitants will fall short through lack of understanding of
the institutional ingredients which had repercussions even on the
foreigner and the slave; while the historian of ideas and rights risks
failing to appreciate the urban circumstances, social and physical, which
differentiated Rome from the co/oniae and overseas communities. The
account that follows attempts to combine the two, but there will
inevitably be ragged edges. No one who works on this subject can fail to

3 First serious account of the informal politics of the plebs: Brunt 1974 (G 23). Significant further
steps: Lintort 1968 (a 62); Veyne 1976 (G 250) 201-61; Vanderbroeck 1987 (c 279).

4 Cic. Dom. 89.

5 Continentia aedificia: Nicolet 1985 (C 232) 831-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 647

echo the heartfelt remarks about the near impossibility of producing a
synthetic account of it made by the scholar who has done most over the
last twenty-five years to explain the position of the plebs.®

The evidence for the numbers, origin and composition of the urban
plebs, for its activities, problems and historical significance, and for how
all those things changed with time, is elusive and fragmentary and has
defied synthesis. The major difficulty is that the best evidence on
particular questions is limited now to one small part and now to another
of the 500-year period during which Rome was by far the largest city in
the Mediterranean. Thus, our best evidence for co/legia comes from late
antiquity, for insulae from the middle Empire, for informal popular
politics from the Julio-Claudian period: despite the works of Cicero, or
because of his prejudices, the late Republic is the period for which we are
not best informed about virtually any important aspect of the history of
the plebs urbana. However, it is clear that the years from the Hannibalic
War to Actium saw all the most important stages in the formation of the
physical setting of the city of Rome and the society which occupied it,
and there is, fortunately, enough genuinely Republican material to
provide the rudiments of an account. Not all aspects of the subject are, in
any case, dealt with in this chapter: religion and the informal politics of
the City are discussed in ch. 15 of Volume x, the major question of
Rome’s relationship to the economy of Italy and the Mediterranean in
ch. 16 above. While this division makes the edges of what follows still
more ragged, that remains preferable to a false synthesis which would
obscure the probable changes of five centuries of very various history.

Rather than aiming at such a synthesis, the present account seeks to
propound a model for the place of the city of Rome within a wider social
context which can help to explain the salient characteristics of its place in
Roman history in general. Earlier accounts advanced political impo-
tence, overcrowding, appalling conditions, food crises, elite manipula-
tion, as reasons for the turmoil of the life of the ordinary inhabitants of
Rome. Here it is our aim to show how all these things were aspects of one
basic underlying phenomenon. Put simply, the case is that the immeasur-
able success of the Roman elite generated a continuous growth and
regrowth of the social organisms of the city and their economic aspects,
within which the tensions of readjustment and incorporation, the
insecurities about belonging, and the struggle of people for social
locations to achieve survival and prosperity, generated the particular
crises and instabilities which appear in the historical record and the
numerous similar events which do not. Rome’s problems were the
problems of success.”

6 Yavetz 1958 (G 261); Yavetz 1988 (G 262) spanning the transition from the Republic to the early
Principate. For the opinion quoted see G 262 viif and 130-1. 7 See ch. 16 above, passim.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

648 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

The plebs urbana was a very large body. The populace of the city
altogether was, by the standards of the ancient world, enormous, and
during the period under consideration the city of Rome came to be home
to the largest single social organism, the largest urban community, in the
Mediterranean world. The fact is often stated, but the search for exact
quantification (which is doomed) has oddly distracted researchers from
the qualitative implications. As geographers know well, when a city
stands at the head of a rank-size hierarchy it is common for it to be
grossly larger than all the other members of the hierarchy: but they have
also attempted, as ancient historians have usually not, to explain, in
terms of social mobility and economic behaviour, why that should be so.
The sheer size of Rome is much discussed, without much attempt to say
how its size changed from 150 B.C. to A.D. 350, or why; and the much
more interesting fact that the largest of cities is also likely to have
constituted one of the most complex of societies has also received little
attention. Accurate figures, even if they were available, would be of
relatively little interest; speculation about the actual size of the popula-
tion is rather vain.§

Of the supposed available statistics the only helpful one, interesting
also from other points of view, is the number of adult males receiving
donatives: 320,000 for the corn dole in 46 B.C., 150,000 immediately after
and 200,000 in 2 B.C.; and 320,000 receiving cash from Augustus in A.D.
5. The 53 per cent variation should at once make one cautious about
what these figures represent, and it is very likely that the people counted
here are simply those who could be expected to frequent the centre of the
city on a fairly regular basis. Caesar and Augustus attempted to make
domicilium (residence at Rome) the basis of eligibility by establishing lists
arranged by the constituent topographical subdivisions of the city, the
vici, and a fixed quota of the entitled, with vacancies filled by a lottery
procedure, subsortitio. If that worked at all (and the enormous problems
of registration should not be underestimated) the quotas of 150,000 and
200,000 may be a rough guide to adult males with domicilium at Rome,
which would give a citizen population of about 500,000. There are,
however, two problems. First, the quotas may represent the level from
which great reductions were being sought, and, second, we know
neither the boundary of the area conceived of as domicilium Romae, nor
what degree of absenteeism was tolerated before the right to claim that
domicilium was lost. Could a bailiff at Saxa Rubra with an adult son

8 Best account: Brunt 1971 (a 16) 376-83; see also Hermansen 1978 (G 118).
9 Res Gestae 15.43 15.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 649

engaged for eight months of the year in the perfume-business at Puteoli
legitimately collect two portions of corn in the time of Caesar?

In any case, it is not clear that in the period before 46 either domicilium
or origo (place of birth) made any difference to eligibility for the corn
dole. What was required was more general participation in the life of the

«metropolis. Nor was need the criterion; the corn was provided to the
accessible part of the popul/us Romanus of all levels, not only to the plebs.
There was no status-test, let alone a means test. Far from being a guide
for us to the ‘real’ population of the city, the phenomenon of the
Jrumentatio was one of the main ingredients in the creation, indepen-
dently of the social realities, of a privileged and extensive status, at the
heart of the citizen-body as a whole, focused on the city of Rome.
C. Gracchus was the originator of the framentationes, and it 1s only natural
that the process should have begun in an age when the city was in other
ways too becoming capital of empire rather than conquering city state.
The old Roman corn supply had been basically utilitarian; from 123 B.c.
the supplying of a need was ingeniously made simultaneously into the
symbol of a status for a portion of the populace and for the city which
housed it.!0 |

A second approach, estimating the population from the habitable area
within the city core, is made very shaky by our uncertainty as to where
people lived for how long.'! Even if we thought that the sacred
boundary, the pomoerium, defined the area of domicilium Romae, we would
still not know what the average duration of such domicilium was within
individuals’ lifetimes. Altogether, the concept ‘population of the city of
Rome’ is slippery and unhelpful. It is time to recognize that the urban
population was probably not a huddle, however huge, of lifelong
urbanites, inhabitants of a Rome around which a tight boundary could
be drawn. We must not impose a notional Aurelianic Wall on the
Republican city, separating the urban and rural, dividing an imagined
core of teeming insu/ae from an agrarian desert on the periphery. We
cannot assume that all those who used Rome lived there, or that all those
who lived there did so throughout their lives. It is futile to try to count
totals in the city of Rome as if the stability from generation to generation
of a mediaeval town prevailed there. Our figures, such as they are, refer
to things that happened a¢# Rome; they are not the vital statistics of Rome.
So the ‘urban population’ is the people at Rome at any particular time.
Rome must be assessed, as it was experienced, from day to day. We must
include the Praenestine in the market, the Galatian at his patron’s, the

'0 Corn supply: Rickman 1979 (G 212) (eligibilicy pp. 175-85). See also Garnsey 1988 (G 100)

167-270.
"Population density: von Gerkan 1940 (G 102); Castagnoli 1980 (G 37); Packer 1967 (G 184).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

650 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

freedman of the visiting Volsinian magistrate, the Bruttian soldier in the
process of joining up ~as well as people who had perhaps really lived in
the same building in the Subura for thirty years. We need not work with
the assumption that the last category was ever in a majority. It is
significant that the ancient sources do not emphasize any such group:
their own subdivisions are not based on places of regular domicile. The
atmosphere of the mediaeval town, with its burgher dynasties, is not that
of the ancient city, above all not that of the greatest metropolis.

A principal reason for that fact is the demography of large pre-
industrial cities. They act, largely through being disease pools and
centres of unhygienic conditions, as net consumers of population.
London, it has been estimated, needed an influx of 2,700 per annum to
maintain its population of some 200,000 in the early seventeenth century;
yet it grew rapidly in size, since so great was the pull of the metropolis
that one in five Englishmen of that period had at some time been a
Londoner.!2 In ancient Rome conditions were no better, as recent
research has made clear.!3 The explanation lies in the disease associated
with urban life, of which an early example is at. hand in the terrible
mortality of the pestilence of 175~174 B.C.'4 But all pre-industrial cities
have shared that feature: the privileges of Rome were such that some
aspects of urban conditions were better there — without the beneficial
effects of river and aqueducts it is likely that Rome could not have
survived. Conditions, horrific by twentieth-century standards, must still
be seen against an even worse background. It was the sudden disasters of
collapse, fire, flood and epidemic, rather than the low level of amenities
from day to day, that made Rome more than usually dangerous
demographically. Rome cannot have experienced demographic stability,
and that it remained so huge an agglomeration for so long can be
regarded as entailing a constant movement towards it on a large scale.
That immigration has left many traces in the literary sources.

We should begin by considering the movement to Rome of the
free-born. It is worth remembering that the Romans believed that their
city had first originated as an amalgam of the stateless, the outcast and the
desperate (the tradition of the Asylum is an ancient one):! that
foundation myth tells us a great deal about the society which propagated
it, when we reflect how potentially discreditable it is by the standards ofa
world in which autochthony, being there from time immemorial, was
the sammum bonum. Of non-Romans, in historical times too it was the
Latins who could be incorporated most easily both by right and by

12 R. Finlay, Population and Metropolis, the Demography of London, 1580-1650 (Cambridge, 1981).

13, Conditions: Scobie 1986 (G 223). Demographic calculations for Rome in the Principate: Frier
1982 (G 83); see also CAH Vol. x2.

4 Livy xut.21.6. 5 Livy 1.8.5-6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 651

culture in the Roman polity, and we hear ofa striking episode in the years
187-172 B.c. when the authorities of the Latin cities complained to the
Senate of the decline in their numbers caused by emigration to Rome. In
187 the figure quoted is 12,000, from a catchment area of only some 500
or 800 square kilometres. Livy implies both that the Senate’s measures
against the movements were ineffective, but also that the process did not
in fact involve citizens of Ardea or Lanuvium in turning their backs on
their home towns, but rather just shifting the centre of their activities to
Rome as they forged chains of family and professional ties right across
the region.'6 It is important for our understanding of the regio Romana
(the neighbourhood of Rome) in the age of Cicero to observe how the
half-century after the Hannibalic War made Rome home for many
Praenestines, Veientines or Tusculans, and forever changed the social
geography of west central Italy.

Throughout the second century the peoples of Italy were in flux.
Rome sent her own subjects far afield in military expeditions and planned
settlements. Romans and Italians began to be widely diffused through-
out the Mediterranean world.!7 Resettlement was a policy with the use of
which the Romans became increasingly familiar; of disloyal allies after
the Hannibalic War, of Ligurians in 180 B.c., of Samnites in the years
before 177.!8 Conversely, the power of Rome grew in the East and many
more Greeks came to the city in various ways.!9 We cannot doubt that
the number of peregrini and Latini in the city was often very large, but we
can only see its impact when measures were taken against the disagree-
able results ~ above all against the practice of usurping the rights of
citizens, especially the vote. Rome’s early institutions had developed an
effective resilience in thé face of the arrival of relatively small numbers of
newcomers, and the registration of citizens itself has been set in this
context: ‘the institution of the census presupposes a small territorial state
and a citizen body with shared moral and political values and a developed
civic loyalty, and not unduly socially differentiated’.20 But the arrival of
various aliens in huge numbers inevitably threatened to destabilize the
Roman state. Measures like those of Pennus (126 B.c.), Fannius (122) and
Crassus and Scaevola (95), who expelled aliens from the city, probably

16 Livy xxx1x.3.4-6 (note esp. 6, ‘iam tum multitudine alienigenarum urbem onerante’, which
shows the wider context of the Latin migration); xut.8.6-12 and 9.9-12; xLu.10.3. Later
immigration: Hiibner 1875 (G 125) the evidence of names in ‘-anus’. Ius migrandi, to ager Romanus if
not to Rome: Brunt 1965 (c 31); Brunt 1971 (A 16) 7o and 380-1; Brunt 1988 (A 19) 240-5; Hopkins
1978 (A 53) 64-74. Movement of Romans of the rural tribes to Rome: Lintott 1968 (A 62) 86.

17 Wilson 1966 (a 128).

18 Livy xxvi.16 (not carried out); xL.38.1; XL.9t.34. .

19 Salmon 1982 (A 102) 118-19. For the sequel in the Principate, G. La Piana, Foreign Groups in
Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire (Cambridge, MA, 1927), and CAH Vol. xv.

20 Gabba 1984 (G 93) 193.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

652 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

only ona temporary basis, or took steps to ensure that they did not usurp
rights in the city which were not their due, proved, not surprisingly,
quite unequal to the problem.?! They suggest, anyhow, that the pressure
of newcomers was particularly intense at certain seasons, and this is
confirmed by laws of the middle of the second century (the Leges Aelia et
Fufia) that controlled the flux of even Roman citizens towards Rome
when legislation was in progress.

Serious as this situation had been, it was nothing to the chaos that
followed the enfranchisement of the Italians after the Social War. The
movement of the new citizens to Rome might have been less precipitous
had it not been for the increasing political rewards of life in the capital; as
Sallust observed, ‘the prime of Italian manhood, which had previously
been prepared to put up with a meagre existence in the countryside
through wage-labour, was lured by the hand-outs made by the state and
by individuals, and came to prefer the leisured and civilized existence of
the Urbs to their thankless toil’.22 The concept of arbanum otium to which
Sallust alludes is one to which we shall return in section tv, below. It is
from the period of the crisis of the Republic that the clearest testimonies
to the swelling of the population of the city come, and it is not too daring
to assert that it was between 89 B.c. and 31 B.c. that the rate of arrival of
new would-be inhabitants of the city was steepest, probably by a long
way. Appian, probably quoting a Republican source, takes a sterner line
than Sallust: ‘the orchestration [his word, choregoumenon, puts the corn
dole in the context of spectacular entertainments] of the annona at Rome
and Rome only attracts to it the workless, mendicant and miscreant
population of Italy’.23 For Varro, as for Livy, commenting on the Latin
problem of the early second century, it is the patres familias who count,
sneaking in to live in the city and employ their hands not with the
pruning-hook and the plough but with the applause of theatre and
circus.24 Varro is clear that the state’s policy with regard to the
maintenance of the city was instrumental in the process, and Augustus
thought the same.?5 Their view was too simple, but it remains true that it
was the escalating munificence of the imperial elite which created the
conditions in which Rome could grow and, in growing, none the less
survive.

But more people came to Rome than were entitled to the perquisites of
the citizen status. Many tried for that too, of course, in some cases
successfully, both at Rome and in the Italian municipia, and a severe law
of 65 B.c., the Lex Papia, attempted to control the practice.2° More
significantly for our theme, it also attempted an explusion from Rome of
all those resident there who were not of Italian origin.2”? The unmistak-

21 See above, ch. 3 pp. 76, 102; ch. 4p. 110. 22 Sall. Cat. 37.7. 2 App. BCiv. 11.120.

24 Varro Rust. i. praef. 3. 25 Suet. Aug. 42.3. 26 Cic. Arch. 10; Balb. 52.
27 Dio xxxvit.9.5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 653

able xenophobia of the measure puts it in the company of those various
expulsions of ideologically suspect groups which long characterized
Roman policy and reflect a lasting insecurity about the tenacity of the
Roman character; but also, concerned with far more than the mainten-
ance of electoral propriety, the Lex Papia is eloquent evidence for the
scale of non-Italian presence at Rome.

Furthermore, although the movement of the free-born in and out of
Rome must not be underestimated, it is less conspicuous in the ancient
literary evidence than the accumulation of population through the
institution of slavery. A high proportion of the enslaved victims of
Rome’s foreign successes from the Hannibalic War onwards was
deployed in the furtherance of the comfortable lifestyles of the urban
elites of Italy and especially of Rome. Something of the role of those
members of the familiae urbanae may be seen in Roman comedy, which
suggests at least how the urban slave had a place of his own in the
economic and social framework of the life of the city. streets: the domus
were not slave-prisons. The inscriptions of the late Republic, and still
more those of the early Imperial period, show us a little of slave-
ownership on a small scale by families far below the elite in means.28
While quantification is not possible, it is probable that more slaves
served in those numerous smaller familiae than in the huge but rarer
ménages of the elite.

Free-born elite opinion was hostile to the taint of servility not only in
the current slave but in the freed slave (/sbertinus) and the child of the
freed slave (and even, sometimes, yet further generations). Roman
masters freed very large numbers of slaves, and the number of /ibertini
who received the Roman citizenship in this way in the late Republic is
likely to have reached many thousands a year. We can trace a series of
measures modifying their status and the deployment of their political
rights from the Hannibalic War on, and it is not too bold a conclusion
that freedman numbers increased to some extent in line with the boom in
the slave trade. The difficulty of reaching agreement on how the /ibertini
should be incorporated in the political system made them a marginal and
debatable group in the life of Rome, though their numbers and the
strong ties which bound them to their patrons gave them considerable
importance. With slaves and foreigners they came to constitute a
subdivision of the city populace (overlapping, through the citizen status
of the formally free /ibertinus, with the plebs urbana) whose effect on Rome
in the late Republic was profound.”? The disdain felt for the servile was
compounded with mistrust of the foreign. The new slaves were mainly
from beyond Italy, and politicians in the second half of the second

28 Plut. Mar. 44, a slave of a poor client.

29 Treggiari 1969 (G 247) 6-52; on /ibertini as a term for all the newly enfranchised, Cels-Saint-
Hilaire 1985 (G 38). Numbers: Harper 1972 (G 113).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

654 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

century were already inclined to silence in political debate ‘those to
whom Italy is only a stepmother’.20

In this way Rome became a ‘city formed from the concourse of the
peoples of the world’,>! and there is little doubt that that is how the
population of the city was maintained. We should, however, be cautious
about overstating, as did the ancient critics, the alienness of the /ibertini.
Whatever their origin, they were in a position to become rapidly
acculturated by the society of the city, and even to play a role in
transmitting its mores. In the inscriptions, it is true, an overwhelming
proportion of freedmen seem to be Greek; but refinements on earlier
studies of the phenomenon suggest that Greek names were in many cases
cultural rather than ethnic, and the relation of free and freed in the
families of the city was rather more complex than was once thought.*2
Nor is it clear to what extent the simply Hellenic was seen as automati-
cally alien. However, inscriptions and literary texts alike assist our
picture of discontinuity in the history of the urban population; the slave-
and freedman-phenomenon at Rome is a case history in the problem of
incorporating the essential, but unwelcome, new arrival.

Not that they only moved i to Rome. Just as the economic and
political concerns of their patroni will have brought to Rome at some
point in their lives a very high proportion of the 2 million or so freedmen
in the Roman world at any time, so they also often moved away again.
Thus in 35 B.c. a Slave unguentarius (perfume-dealer) from the Sacra Via,
dependent of a well-known Campanian family, set up an inscription on
the island of Ithaca:33 he is a typical member of the ‘population of Rome’,
reminding us that that phrase is only a label of convenience for an
agglomeration which changed from day to day.** Static models for the
social history of the city should be replaced by one which has a place for
the mobility of the individual, the fluidity and mutability of social groups
and the transience of family and household structures there.

Movement away from Rome took place from time to time on a large
scale. It is not surprising that the Romans themselves reacted with
consternation to the discovery that their city was becoming populous on
a scale otherwise unheard of; and not with the abundant citizen
manpower in which any ancient state would take pride, but with people
whose relationship to the citizen body was either dubious or clearly
inferior. Used as they were to disposing of large groups by resettlement,
and possessing — as the Latin citizen expulsion discussed above shows —

30 Val. Max. v1.2.3; the same description of the plebs, plus its mercenary side: Petron. Saf, 122.

31 Comment. Pet. 54.

32 Tenney Frank 1915-16 (G 73); Taylor 1961 (B 248). More recent approach: Huttunen 1974 (G
127); Solin 1982 (G 228). Acculturation of the upwardly-mobile: Jongman 1988 (G 133) ch. 6.

33 ILLRP 826.
¥% Pensioning off of freedmen: Rawson 1976 (G 209) 93-4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 655

an adequate degree of registration to make selection possible, they
naturally undertook planned ‘drainings-off (the phrase is Cicero’s, of
Rullus’ proposed settlements in 63 B.c.)35 of the accumulated population
of the city. Colonies of Romans and Latins, linked in purpose to
recruitment, were the main precedent, and it was generous but prudent
to allow freedmen to take part in them. Philip V of Macedon at least
thought that the use of freedmen in that way was the secret of Rome’s
astonishing eaandria, her resources of population,* and new evidence of
the third-century colonia at Paestum shows that he was not wholly
mistaken.37 But it is hard to assess the numbers of freedmen involved in
the colonies of the middle Republic, and the overall numbers sent out
were quite modest at that time. The sources of slaves, moreover, were
then closer to home, so that the freedmen involved may have seemed less
alien than was perhaps normal in the late Republic.

In the last decades of the Republic the problem and the solution were
alike on a much larger scale. Sulla’s foundation of Urbana in Campania
may be the prototype; Rullus in 63 was planning the settlement of
numerous egentes from the city in the ager Campanus.38 But Julius Caesar
did most in practice to promote the resettlement of the urban freedman.
His foundation for such colonists at Corinth, in particular, seems to have
been chosen specially because of the commercial associations of the
ancient city,9 a rare recognition of the plebeian ethos which we shall
discuss below. But freedmen were included also in Caesar’s African
colonies and elsewhere, and the charter of his foundation at Urso in
Spain shows that in those settlements they were not subject to the usual
constitutional disabilities. From the early Empire, but strongly Republi-
can in tradition, we may compare the measures of a.D. 6,40 when famine
led Augustus to expel, probably temporarily, slaves and foreigners
except for teachers and doctors, and the coincidence of the Pannonian
revolt impelled him to recruit freedmen into the regular army. In a.p. 19
Tiberius responded to tension in the city by removing 4,000 Jewish
freedmen to Sardinia in a kind of colonial deduction.*! Throughout the
late Republic, in fact, we see the Roman ambivalence towards the lowest
stratum of the free population: they are despised but useful, the objects
of insult and consideration at the same time. We must certainly not be
misled by the obligatory sneers of the literary sources into taking a
wholly negative view of Roman attitudes to the freedmen ex masse, for all
the numerous disadvantages under which they stood.

Neither must we overlook the mobility of individuals, again in
aggregate probably much more important than that brought about by

38 Cic. Leg. Agr. 11.70. % SIG 543.31-4. 3 Pedley 1990 (£ 21A) ch. 7.
38 Brunt 1971 (A 16) 312-13. 3% Strab. vii1.6.23.
40 Suet. Aug. 42.3; Oros. vit.3.6. 41 Tac. Ann. 11.85.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

656 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

these spectacular measures. The Ithaca slave mentioned above was far
from unique. Freedmen in particular were mobile, serving their patrons’
needs, and some of the free-born too travelled quite widely. Epitaphs
from all over the Mediterranean world commemorate people who were,
at some time in their lives, part of the p/ebs urbana.*2 But commoner by far
than moving to the ends of the empire was to move a little way out into
the densely populated and comfortable periphery, either to the inner
suburban zones or to the dormitory towns and resorts of Latium,
Campania and Etruria. Such movements took place also of course on a
seasonal basis, as those who could fled the scorching summer, taking
with them dependents and employees, or as the opportunities for
seasonal labour in the fields or at the ports presented themselves. The
process will have been easier for those who were free-born, and this may
be reflected in the relative paucity of funeral epitaphs relating to the plebs
ingenua: their burials are to be sought at Nomentum and Setia, at Gabii
and Lavinium. From the freedman world comes a classic example:
Geganius Clesippus, an apparitor of Roman magistrates whose connex-
ion with an old patrician family is casually attested, left Rome on his last
journey to be buried in a grand tomb at Ulubrae overlooking the
Pomptine Marshes.*3 The close ties between Rome and its region are
apparent in the tombs of many others of his milieu too.

So the close interdependence of Rome and its region and the degree of
mobility from one to the other are a key to resolving the old problem of
the balance of free and freed in the city.44 The problem arose from the
balance in the thousands of Romans known to us from epitaphs — which
means that it was in any case really about the composition of the p/ebs
under the Empire, since Republican inscriptions are much less common.
The proportion of those who were certainly freedmen to those who were
certainly sngenui was remarkably high, and the conclusion, to which we
have alluded, about the correlation between Greek cognomina and servile
background made the apparent imbalance still more marked. Now that
the cogomina are receiving detailed study, and the family relationships of
the tombstones, as well as the mere names on them, are being considered,
more of the free-born seem to be represented in this body of evidence,
but the main factor is the mobility of ingenui, which took them for burial
away from the urban nucleus, and so out of the purview of the sixth
volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, whose confines have done
more than even Aurelian’s Wall to promote a mistakenly isolationist
picture of the social life of Rome.

42 Musicus, the imperial slave from Gaul who died in Rome under Tiberius and was mourned by
his entourage of sixteen other slaves: [LS 1514 and CAH Vol. x12.

3 ILLRP 696, and see Purcell 1983 (G 199) 140-1; Bodel 1989 (G 18).

44 See above, n. 32.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 657

It must remain a formal possibility, for all that, that there was in the
late Republic a group of free-born Romans ‘largely too poor to erect
even the simplest epitaphs’, a steadily dwindling group of families of
‘Romani di Roma’, poor, honest, proud, immemorial inhabitants of the
city, struggling to preserve Romulean decency and, generation by
generation, outnumbered and outclassed in means by the servile rabble.
That view is largely founded on a passage of Tacitus which divides the
populus into a ‘sound section closely tied to the great families’ and ‘the
filthy plebs habituated to circus and theatres’;*5 the first group is glossed
as including the clients and freedmen of those who had suffered death or
exile for political reasons, and the second as being associated closely with
the ‘worst kind of slave and profligate’. Discussion of this passage
properly belongs in a later volume, but simply quoting it should serve to
show how hard it is to relate to anything in the epigraphic evidence. In
particular, Tacitus is saying nothing about the means of any of these
plebeians except the profligates, and his view of poverty is in any case
hopelessly distorted by social distance. Nor is he putting all freedmen on
one side: he would have agreed with Cicero that there could be, strange
phrase, ‘libertini optimates’.46 Tacitus’ remark is in fact ethical, not
demographic, and more informative about the residual influence of the
‘great families’ at the end of their Julio-Claudian eminence than about
the nature of the society of the populace.

In fact such a stratum of poor éngenui is not likely to have been a
perennial aspect of the life of Rome. Economic poverty at Rome was not
a state that an individual is likely to have endured for long, let alone a
family: it was, if at all extreme, usually rapidly fatal. Ancient concepts of
poverty, of being an egens, tend to reflect this; they are either status-based,
like the analysis of Tacitus, or refer to the result of sudden calamity
rather than to the prolonged state of economic poverty.‘7 It is the social
mobility of urban society that makes the long survival in Rome of
families of poor éngenui unlikely. Stability was abnormal; the most needy
went to the wall, and survival entailed betterment. Each ‘generation’ of
freedmen was the parent of the next generation of the plebs ingenua.
Families that survived several generations had excellent chances of
considerably bettering their social position; that very often meant
leaving Rome, and, as we saw, its epigraphic record. And that social
mobility was the product of the privilege of Rome, the opportunities
created by the enormous outpouring of every kind of resource there.
Thus was created a state of social flux in which the families that survived
underwent rapid fluctuations of fortune and status. And that is what the

45 Tac. Hist. 1.4. 4 Cic. Sest. 97, and see Treggiari 1969 (G 247) 33.

47 Poverty at Rome: Whittaker 1989 (G 260). Poverty as sudden calamity: MacMullen 1971 (G
149).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

658 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

epigraphic record, fragmentary though it is, shows us faithfully: it is a
picture of a complex society moving fast, a snapshot of a population in
motion in every sense.48 There are no great anomalous gaps: the
hypothesis of the ancient but poverty-stricken burgher families of the
plebs ingenua must yield to Occam’s razor.

So the movements which we have been describing bound the city
closely to what was around it; the study of the motive power that
generated those exchanges of people must account for what was singular
about the city in relation to its nearer and further periphery. The theme
of the privilege of the city will be discussed most fully in section Iv
below; first it will be useful to consider some basic aspects of the setting
of Rome and its social and economic consequences.

The ancient city was always intimately connected to its agricultural
base; the physically highly urban forms of the town must not persuade us
that it was firmly separated from the country. The characteristic
activities of the town were concerned with the redistribution of the food
produced by the country, and with the intensification of that production |
in various ways. The city demanded, and assisted the exploitation of, the
nutritional resources of the area with which it was associated. The
production of agricultural equipment is typical of the simplest level of
that relationship: it is not strange that the elder Cato recommended the
farmers of west central Italy to turn to Rome for some of their more
specialized hardware.‘?

But the link soon passes beyond simple foodstuffs and their produc-
tion into the area of more elaborate and luxurious products of agricul-
ture and pastoralism — wine for pleasure as well as for nutrition, finer
cereals instead of pulses and coarse grains, exotic fruits, oil for light and
cleaning, and the range of secondary products including wool, leather
and flax. The production of those and their processing and redistribution
is another example of the co-operation and interdependence of the town
and the countryside, and those activities were characteristic of the pre-
industrial Mediterranean city. Rome itself was the most developed case
of the interweaving of agricultural intensification and urban growth,
drawing, as it came to, on the whole Mediterranean basin as well as
transforming the economy of peninsular Italy.5° So the relationship of
Rome with its economic hinterland generated a characteristic range of
service, processing, redistributive activities in the city, those associated
above all with the retail unit known as the faberna. As Origen put it ina

48 ILS 1926 provides a classic example of such upward social mobility seen across the
ramifications of a family of the Augustan age.

49 Cato Agr. 135.

50 Nicolet in ch. 16 above, passim; Garnsey 1980 (G 98) 44, ‘a continuum existed between

agricultural and industrial employment’. Visual depictions of crafts on tombstones: Zimmer 1982 (G
266).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 659

later period, it was through the contact of children with ‘the typical base
filth, woolworkers, cobblers, launderers’5! that, according to its oppo-
nents, Christianity spread. Working with wool, leather, astringents and
dyes, metal, clay, timber and straw, oil, wine, grain and fresh produce
was not an accident of city life, an opportunity available to those who
found themselves in a city, as a secondary thing; it was city life itself, the
behaviour without which the city would not have been, except as a
symbolic meeting-place of the elite.

Such retail activity, &apéleia, was normal in the Greek city too, and was
early regarded as sordid on grounds of a simple economic logic: retail
can only support the retailer through the addition of an arbitrary sum to
the original ‘real’ price of a commodity, and that addition is essentially a
lie, and dishonest by nature. Cicero passes on the idea in a Roman
context: agriculture is respectable, but the workshop can contain no one
of good character: ‘neque quicquam ingenuum habere potest officina’.5?
Craftsmen were not good raw material for military excellence.53 Also,
the associations of the faberna were the very antithesis of elegance and
civilization.54 The notion that the redistributive labour of the retailer
was a service deserving a wage seems not to have occurred to the
thinkers of antiquity: a wage was, in any case, itself a source of shame,
not a neutral social value at all.

The taberna was the setting of a whole range of activities of a retail-
related kind, like service-industry and the sale of cooked food, not
simply shopkeeping as we know it. Its centrality to the whole life of the
Italian city and to the structure of urban populations in our period
justifies making it the principal subject of the next section.

Camillus found doors wide open, shops doing business with all their contents
out on display. Each artisan was intent on his own work. He could hear the
learning-games of the children, voice raised against voice. He saw that the
streets were full of people, women and children wandering at will to do
whatever they needed.55

The picture of happy Tusculum, unafraid of siege, is so conventional
that it may be applied to any Roman town, but more particularly to
Rome itself. In it, what is most specially characteristic of the Roman city
landscape is the shop, the saberna. Rome was a city of shops, its people a
nation of shopkeepers.

The great importance of the ¢aberna has indeed been observed, but it

51 Origen Contra Celsum 3.55. 52 Cic. Off. 1.130-1; Treggiari 1969 (G 247) 89.
53. Livy vutt.20.4. 54 Pliny HN xxxut.qg. 55 Livy vi.25.9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

660 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

has generally been thought of as a casual and contingent phenomenon,
whereas it is actually an outward aspect of, and the key to understanding,
the social structure of the city. Economically, of course, the prominence
of the saberna need only mean that a large proportion of the population
(and we include women as well as men in this statement; some of the
Minturnae collegia are of women) was involved in the redistribution of
the products of primary activities, above all of agriculture. But kapéleia
in the earlier Greek world was shopkeeping without the shops: it
denoted an activity which could take place anywhere and was inherently
mobile. Temporary booths were its usual setting, such as characterized
the Athenian agora in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.’ The arrival of
the faberna, the permanent, usually rectangular, module in which storage
and negotiation took place besides the private life of the tabernarius, and
its systematic arrangement within the city, are significant developments
in ancient urban architecture. Its origin may lie in the buildings for
specially important or valuable economic activities, like the Athenian
mint, which began to appear in Greek cities at the end of the fifth
century. The fringes of tabernae added to public buildings — Hellenistic
stoai and the predecessors of the first basilicas at Rome ~ are a prototype,
and the development in southern Italy of the specialized foodstuff
bazaar, the macellum, which, through Campania and Rome, was diffused
widely in the later Roman world, parallels the process closely at a slightly
later date.58 Somewhere in the ancestry of the concept a place must also
be allotted to the notoriously luxurious market street of Capua in the
third century B.c., the Seplasia, famous above all for its scent-makers.5?
The origins and spread of the type should be closely associated with the
growth in the volume and variety of high-value luxury articles in
Mediterranean trade over the period from the sixth to the third centuries:
at Rome the taberna, however despised, never quite lost its association
with high-value commodities — the Sacra Via was for long a market
street of luxury fabernae, perhaps not so unlike the Seplasia — and the
tabernae of the money-changer, the jeweller or the luxury clothier or
perfumier remained important in the associations of the retail world for
the Romans. The arrival of the luxury ¢aberna was accomplished at
Rome by the age of the Hannibalic War, as recent work on the Forum has
emphasized: Livy describes a fire between the Tiber and the Forum

5¢ Tabernae: Loane 1938 (G 147); Staccioli 1959 (B 318); Yavetz 1970 (G 263) 144-6. Women:
Kampen 1981 (G 136). See also Skydsgaard 1976 (G 226).

57 Demosthenes 18 (On the Crown) 169.

58 Stoas: Coulton 1976 (B 282) 9-11; 85-8. They too began in the late fifth century B.c. See also
Coarelli 1985 (B 277) 146; De Ruyt 1985 (B 285).

59 Asc. Pis. 10¢.
6 Lipinsky 1961 (G 146); Panciera 1970 (B 214).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 661

Boarium in 192 B.c. in which ‘all the shops with wares of great value’
were destroyed.°

From those beginnings the world of the ¢aberna expanded dramati-
cally. The evidence of commonplaces like Livy’s Tusculum and the
testimony of the archaeological record — the thousands of sabernae
apparent on the Flavian and Severan Marble Plans of Rome and in the
streets of Pompeii and Ostia and elsewhere — is unambiguous. Closely
associated with the taberna, moreover, was a variant which needs some
mention — the offcina. This type was associated in the Romans’ mind with
craft or artisans’ work — production, in other words, or what we might
cautiously call ‘industry’. The Greek term is ergasférion, and from the
extraordinary impression produced on him by the sheer multiplicity of
Rome’s fabernae and officinae we find an author of the second century A.D.
praising Rome as ‘the common ergastérion of the whole world’.® This is
the craftsmen’s activity which we noted in Cato’s De Agricultura, typical
of the ancient Mediterranean town.

The steady expansion of the trade of the Mediterranean and the
gradual enrichment of Italian society no doubt had an effect on the
proliferation of the ‘luxury-saberna’ type here sketched, but neither
process will quite explain how the /aberna itself, as a specific form,
became so universal as to be the hallmark of Roman urbanism.® On the
one hand we have the fundamental activities of the ancient city, and on
the other a tradition of utilitarian building associated with the protection
of the most rarefied of those activities, the collection and redistribution
among the higher elite of the requirements of the status-giving life of
luxury. Nothing made it inevitable that the tanning or dyeing of the one
should take place in the physical setting of the other, or that there should
be any very intimate social relationship between the practitioners of the
more mundane urban activities and those who carried on the equivalent
pursuits at the more luxurious level.

By the last days of the Republic, however, the sabernarii had become
almost synonymous with the urban population. Their closing of the
tabernae and boycotting of the tribunals of the Forum in the chaos of the
40s B.C. was a formal protest to the triumvirs, a sign that the city was
no longer functioning.®* The view of the elite was not sympathetic;
it represented the fabernarii as the dregs of Rome. Cicero, in a
passage which does much to confirm the insignificance of an alleged

61 Livy xxxv.4o; Coarelli 1977 (G 42). At that period the state, mainly through the censors,
involved itself in the provision of premises for such activities: a novel mood, which did not last into
the age of anxiety about plebeian activities, but was resumed in the Principate.

62 Aristides To Rome 11. 63 Boethius 1960 (B 264) chs. 2 and 4.

64 App. BC. v.18. 65 Yavetz 1970 (G 263) 144-6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

662 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

right-thinking, stalwart but needy, traditional plebs ingenua at Rome,
blames the lack of support he experienced when he was driven into exile
on the malice of the populus Romanus mustered in the city by his
opponents: ‘a populace which could only be gathered because the shops
were ordered closed’. The genuine Roman people, to whom dominion
of the world had properly been given, and who would have supported
Cicero, would have been assembled not through the closure of the
tabernae but through the emptying of the municipalities.©© Examples of
the same hostility to the ¢abernarii could easily be multiplied. Cicero
himself provides the key to the elite’s ambivalence about ¢abernae. A
famous letter to Atticus® reveals how he owned a complex of tabernae at
Puteoli which were in danger of collapse, but on which he need not fear
making a loss because a local agent ~ himself a man of considerable
substance in the town — would manage the redevelopment with
sufficient care and acumen. It was the initiative of the Roman upper class
which produced the proliferation of the ¢aberna.

The inconsistency between the disgust of the orator and the enthu-
siasm of the investor was resolved through the institution of the freed
slave. The Romans, as we saw, inherited from the Greeks their disdain
for the range of urban activities which we have described as native to the
urbanism of the ancient Mediterranean. Wages, profit, fees and salaries
were all despised. Pliny the Elder remarks that the cultivation of madder
and soapwort as dye plants for the cloth-business is extraordinarily
profitable, as we would expect in the vicinity of a city like Rome — and
therefore is something of which all are ignorant except for the ‘filthy
multitude’:68 Varro likewise claimed (despite the association of the fish-
pond with the luxury villa) that commercial pisciculture was practised
apud plebem.© The stock figure of the honest artisan was not familiar in
ancient Rome: being hired to doa day’s work made you a villain, as in the
passage from Cicero’s De Domo. Such pursuits had the taint of the servile,
and they had in fact in the early days of the city been done by the slaves of
individual households. The last three centuries B.c. saw the progressive
emancipation of the urban producer from that household framework, no
doubt above all because the scale of Rome’s urban catchment area and
the size of her population and the rate of interest of her wealthy all rose so
dramatically; but he was not emancipated from the stigma.

So it was particularly through the institution of manumission that the
involvement of the elite, actors in the play of power and landed wealth,
with the backdrop of the faberna and its activities was maintained
(though the role of other free c/ientes should not be overlooked). The
history of the Roman /ibertinus is the history of the p/ebs urbana and the

6 Cic. Dom. 89-90. 87 Cic. Aff. XIV.9.1.
$8 Pliny HN x1x.47. 69 Varro Rust. 11.17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 663

history of the city, socially, economically and culturally. The growth of
the relative independence of freedmen is the central chapter in the story
of the emancipation of the life of the city from the households of the elite,
taking the former slave by successive stages (of which the action of the
praetor Rutilius in about 118 B.C. in reducing the formal obligations
(operae) of freedman to patron is an example)’ to the degree of
independence vividly shown in the first century a.p. by the business
archive of a Puteoli firm found in the ‘Agro Murecine’ near Pompeii, in
which we see freedmen taking responsibility for trading transactions of
very high value.7! It was not simply that by manumission the patron
disembarrassed himself of an ageing slave and gained the purchase price
of a new one. The new, ever more informal, economic relationships
offered much wider possibilities for various sorts of gain (a possible
example is the freedman of a consular family, perhaps of a consul of 106
B.C., Operating as a margaritarius (pearl-dealer) on the Sacra Via in the
Forum:7? the capital involved for a taberna in this locality must have been
the patron’s rather than the client’s in the first instance). It is a curious
paradox that by allowing and encouraging the gradual emancipation of
the freedman from formal ties with the manumittor, the slave-owning
class of Rome (and we must not identify them with the freeborn high
elite, since even many freedmen owned many slaves) actually came to
gain far more than they had lost. The less acceptable result was inevitably
that freedmen could and did aspire to ever higher status; and although
the state was prepared to pass measures reducing their burdens, it
actively discouraged their upward social mobility.73 That inconsistency,
characteristic of the late Republic, did much to aggravate social
instability.

Throughout the Republic and early Empire the characteristic freed-
man, part of the world of the ¢abernarii, preserved both the stigma of the
servile associations of his employment and with it the minutely subdi-
vided tasks characteristic of slave households. The division of labour
was therefore intense at Rome, where 160 kinds of jobs are attested by
the haphazard epigraphic evidence, as opposed to 100 or so in the far
better known cities of late mediaeval western Europe: not primarily an
economic phenomenon, but a reflection of the social origins of the
taberna-world.” So the Romans themselves recognized that there had

70 D.38.2.1.1 (Ulpian); Watson 1967 (F 295) 228.

™ Bove 1979 (B 135).

72 ILLRP 797; Hopkins 1978 (A 53) t15—31; Garnsey 1980 (G 98) and 1981 (c 99) for the
relationship between free and slave artisan labour; D’Arms 1984 (c 51).

73 Treggiari 1969 (G 247); Fabre 1981 (c 65); Waldstein 1986 (F 288).

% Division of labour: Hopkins 1978 (G 123); Treggiari-1980 (G 248); E. Patlagean, Pawvreté
économique et pauvreté soctale a Byzance (The Hague, 1976); Park 1975 (G 186); Maxey 1975 (G 155).
Much of the evidence is from the Imperial age, but extrapolation back to the Republic is justified by

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

664 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

only been barbers operating at Rome since the beginning of the third
century B.C., and traced the moment, approximately, when the baking of
bread became a trade rather than a domestic service. Here again we are
Witnessing not just the dislocation of a servile occupation from its
original setting, but the creation of a wider market for the produce.
From roughly the age of the Hannibalic War a change took place in the
dietary regime of the urban plebs which has been seen as a revolution; as
well as the diffusion of higher quality bread it involved the much more
widespread drinking of wine, and we may add the intensification of the
agriculture of the urban periphery, creating a growing zone of market
gardens.”6

The importance of this change for the life of the plebs was more than a
matter of mere consumption (though it must be seen as one of the
improvements in the background standard of living discussed in
sections 111-Iv below). The economy of wine production, with its
seasonal demand for labour, offered many opportunities to the casual
labourer; as quantity came to be more in demand than quality, the
smallest property became a suitable site for the growing of at least one
vine. The ¢abernarii could grow their own stock; the saberna was a
constituent unit of a new agriculture, not just of the new retail and
production network: indeed it is in many ways almost a term fora kind of
relationship between labour and production more or less concerned with
agriculture. So with the market gardens too, the people who hired them
or owned them and who sold the produce in the ¢abernae of the macella
and other retail points, lived very like those whom they fed but who were
involved in crafts or services for more of their time. It is therefore not
surprising to find a steady expansion of the intensive horticulture which
brought the huge profits to Pliny’s dye-plant growers, from the second
century B.C. through to the early Imperial period; nor that once again the
really wealthy were in on the act. Cicero wrote to his freedman Tiro:

Put Parhedrus up to making his own bid for the tenancy of the garden — that’s
the way to get the market gardener himself moving. That criminal Helico used
to hand over a thousand in cash and what did he get? A plot without sheltered
beds, built drain, a proper boundary-wall, ora shed. Are we going to let the man
laugh at our handing out so much on the improvements? Make it hot for him as I
am with Motho: I’m getting every last petal out of these flower-arrangements.””

Garlands for the festivals and ceremonies integral to plebeian life at
Rome were produced and marketed through the smallholding saberna

evidence for trades at Capua (Frederiksen 1984 (A 35) ch. 13), Minturnae (Johnson 1935 (B 298)) and
Praeneste (ILLRP 101-10). The view here builds on the suggestions of Skydsgaard 1976 (G 226).
See also Jongman 1988 (G 133) 184-6.

78 Barbers: Pliny HN vu.211, cf. Varro Rust. 11.11.10, Bakers: Pliny HN xtt.107.

76 Wine: Tchernia 1986 (G 238). Market gardening: Carandini 1988 (G 33), who, however,
overemphasizes the elite. See also Nicolet in ch. 16 above, p. 616. 7 Cic, Fam. xvi.18.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 665

network; freedman moved against freedman in a great everlasting
wrangle whose motive power often came in the end, as here, from the
most important men in Rome.

Predictably, also, the new alimentary habits found their distinctive
location in the physical setting of the sabernae. As the eating of baker’s
bread and the drinking of wine became an ever more important
ingredient in the ordinary existence of the people of the city of Rome,
this alimentary revolution took place in the world of the taberna,”8 which
became the basic source of daily staples; ‘bread and wine from the
barman, straight out of the jar’.’? Tabernae included cookshops, wine
bars, places of resort, to such an extent that those were the functions
associated with the very word ‘aberna when it passed into the post-
classical languages. Those lowly functions too in the end lined the
pockets of the elite.

It is scarcely surprising that freed slaves stood thus between the servile
but lucrative activities of the ancient city and the high standards of the
nobility which depended upon them, and, given the paradoxes on which
we have remarked, that their position was extremely ambiguous. On the
one hand the language of disgust as we have quoted it from Cicero and
Pliny: on the other the concession from Cicero himself that there are
‘good types amongst the freedmen’ (optimates libertini), and the almost
affectionate persona of the ‘busy freedman’ the savus libertinus,®° patroniz-
ing but not hostile. A certain amused sanction for the weakness of the
tabernarius milieu is found; the commonest Greek cognomen by far
among the freedmen of Rome is Philargyrus, ‘lollylover’.8! The behav-
iour of the freedmen themselves was ambiguous; they can be found
taking a perverse pride in the shamefulness of their activities, advertising
them vividly on tombstones like that of the great contract-baker
Eurysaces, or, outside Rome, that of Caprilius Timotheus who grew rich
on exchanging wine for slaves, clearly without shame.®2

Timotheus reminds us that the world of the aberna was not unique to
Rome. Not only do we find it even earlier in Campania (where the first
examples of the ‘taberna-tombstones’ occur), but it is the hallmark of this
set of economic and social relations wherever they are found in the
Mediterranean. On the way to Ithaca where the snguentarius set up his
stone83 was the flourishing line of ports of the Epirot coast; the
Republican inscriptions of towns like Buthrotum closely resemble those
of Rome.* And these are all on their way to the economic centres of the

78 Kleberg 1957 (G 137). 7 Cic. Pis. 67.

80 Cic. Sest. 97; Comment. Pet. 29. 81 Solin 1982 (G 228) 755.

8 Eurysaces: [LLRP 805. Timotheus: Duchéne 1980 (B 149).

83 See above, n. 33.

84 Epirus: Purcell 1987 (G 201); Buthrotum: Cabanes 1986 (B 139) 151, with cults of Stata Mater
and the Lares Vici.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

666 17, ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

East; Corinth in its new Caesarian freedman incarnation at the end of the
Republic, and, earlier, Delos. In the West too, at New Carthage or
Narbo, the same atmosphere can be detected.*5 But all this was at its most
intense in Rome; without Rome, indeed, many of the other communities
would have lacked a prototype and the central links in the economic
chains to which they belonged could not have functioned. It was,
moreover, at Rome that the life of the saberna and the officina, the
cookshops and the stews, made possible a climate of public agitation
central to the informal politics of the time; it was a defining characteristic
of Rome to have developed to such an extent a distinctive and elaborate
social behaviour of low-status people, what one might call a ‘low life’.8

The ancient writers who comment with distaste on the socially
extended immorality are not unaware that it derives in the end from
Rome’s supereminent position, that it is a symbol, if a repugnant one, of
the status of the city that has conquered the world. First, the whole city
can be seen as a great household, an enormous cluster of operations
devoted to the maintenance of the luxury of the elite: the luxury-taberna
belongs in this context. Secondly, arising from this, the sabernae and their
produce are there to further the typically aristocratic activity of benefac-
tion. Without the existence of macellum and officinae, how would the
Roman magnate stage the lavish triumphal epu/vm (banquet), or equip
the spectacular aedilician games? Thirdly, arising in turn from this, just
as the functions of retail and production, when emancipated from the
household, like their practitioners, take on a life of their own, so the
diffusion of the ¢aberna-world and its benefits outwards and downwards
from the service of the elite comes to be a kind of unplanned general
benefaction or ‘liturgy’ of the all-owning, all-spending wealthy to the
privileged city-community where they belong. The provision of quite
good wine, of good cheap bread, of the social life of the cookshops, of
the services of barbers, cobblers, dyeshops, fullers, cheap-clothes-shops
and so on is part of the general advantage of being a Roman of the
capital.

Thus the proliferation of the saberna was organically connected with
other aspects of the life of the city; with the provision of subsidized or
free grain (which promoted the system in its turn by encouraging the
growth of manumission),®’ the multiplication of spectacles and enter-
tainments and the escalation in their cost; and the spectacular investment
in the beautification of the city with more and more audacious and
opulent architectural projects. But it is perhaps in the close parallel with

85 Geography of these socio-economic phenomena: Fabre 1981 (G 65) maps. Reflected also in the
distribution of the tesserae nummulariae, ILLRP 987-1063, see Nicolet in ch. 16 above, p. 633.

86 For the informal politics see Vol. x2, ch. 15.

87 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1v.24.5; Dio xxxix.24.1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 667

the changes in housing of the living (and to some extent of the dead) that
most interest lies. In the development of the multi-storey apartment
block, the snsu/a, as in the spread of the taberna, we see systematic
management for profit of phenomena which were growing naturally as
the city grew, and it is perhaps better to regard insula and taberna (and the
strip-house which combined elements of both and was to have so long a
history in Italy) as parallel and interwoven urbanistic tendencies rather
than allot primacy. The ordered rows of systematically laid out tabernae
are not so basic or immemorial a phenomenon: both ¢aberna and insula
share a common origin in the chaotic labyrinths of huts and shanties
which characterized the city in the middle Republic but were only a
memory in Varro’s day: Festus writes that ‘an adtibernalis is a dweller in
one of a set of tabernae. That this was the oldest kind of dwelling at Rome
may be deduced from the foreign peoples who to this day dwell in
aedificia tabulata [buildings of planks]. This is why the structures in
military camps even when they are made of leather are still called
tabernacula.’88 The taberna remained a dwelling as well as a place of
employment.®

In insula as well as taberna the plebeian was integrated fully and in a
complex way into the social structure of the whole city; for the insula was
an expensive and artificial construction, and the tenant was expected to
pay rent, often substantial..° We are wrong to regard the flats in the
insulae as intolerable slums. They were intended to be an extension of the
relative solidity and comfort of the houses of the independently wealthy,
and were indeed often contiguous with them. That they were often
disastrously jerry-built or in terrible condition did not, probably, make
them less pleasant than the dwellings of the rural poor; and at least they
had the advantage of the urban location with all the privileges of status
and benefaction which that entailed. It is certain that by the Empire, at
least, such blocks were by no means the preserve of the poorest. Neither
should they be seen as a new way of housing people who had previously
lived otherwise: just as the sabernae were the location of new activities by
anew social group, not the scene of freedmen doing jobs which had once
been done by a now dispossessed free poor, so the insulae were the
dwelling-places of the new social strata and corresponded to nothing in
the Rome that went before. In the world of the dead the advent of the
tomb-reliefs and the funerary self-expression which goes with them
provides a parallel.™! It is noteworthy that all these phenomena deve-
loped side by side in the last years of the Republic: the reliefs and

88 Festus p. 11L. See Boethius 1960 (B 264) ch. 4 and Vol. x2, ch. 15.
89 Varro Ling. v.160; Hor. Odes 1.4.

% Frier 1980 (G 82) 39-47; Frier 1977 (G 81); Hermansen 1978 (G 118).
Zanker 1975 (B 262); Purcell 1987 (G 202).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

668 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

tombstones which reveal the /aberna-world to us spread from Campania
in the age of Cicero, and it is at that period that we begin to hear of major
investment in the taberna and the insula.°

The whole system of interlocking concerns, retail, patronage, profit,
rent, gift, trade, the worlds of house, work, recreation and death,
binding everyone in Rome, elite and dependent — Aonestiores and
humiliores, in a sense, already in the age of Scipio Aemilianus —
constituted an integrated society in which everyone had a place. There
was a very great range of status and prestige in these places, in these
social niches; a continuum stretching from the senator to the slave.%
Only the interdependence we have been describing could have been
capable of producing so cohesive a system, in which there were no
classes in any of the usual senses of the term, no major independent and
alienated groups. Being unused to such a society, scholars have looked
(in vain) for signs of a heavily stratified system at Rome; hence the major
problems in interpreting the plebs: its poorer sections do not behave as a
lower class, it is impossible to talk of a middle class, and the often
postulated group of ancestral Roman plebeians of slender means is, as we
saw, a myth.

What cement binds this system? What kinds of cohesion are there in
the relationships we have put forward? The tie of ownership and ex-
ownership, with all the duties and obligations provided under the law of
slavery and manumission, is the most important of those mentioned thus
far; but there are two other central aspects of the relationship. One is at
heart economic; the other can be described as essentially political.

The relations of superior to inferior at Rome during this period were
never simply those of social obligation: the economic aspect was no less
important. Such relationships, whether between free-born and free-born,
free-born and freed or even free-born and slave, fundamentally depended
on the lubrication of money. This is why the ¢aberna and the insula were of
such significance; they were the physical expression of a range of
essentially economic relationships. The simplest of them is of course
payment for services rendered, either through wages or, more often
through contract payments. The Juvenalian picture of an idle populace
interested in nothing but panem et circenses (bread and spectacles) is a most
unreliable basis for a reconstruction of the life of the Roman plebs at any
period: the multitude wanted and needed to buy food and it was a
concern of the state to provide them with the opportunity to do so. The
world of the tabernae reflects this; the poor of Rome worked for their

% Frier 1980 (G 82) 121~6. Note the implication of Diod. xxx1.18.2 that high-rent apartments
were already to be found in the middle of the second century s.c.

%3 Purcell 1983 (G 199). % Treggiari 1969 (G 247) 68-91.

% Tac. Hist. 1v.38; Suet. Vesp. 18; Brunt 1980 (c 26); Le Gall 1971 (G 145).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 669

daily sustenance and earned most of it; the generosity of the state and the
great was not intended to fulfil any practical need, and only served to
lighten the burden of the need to earn, not to remove it. So, in a great
variety of employments, the men and women of the city earned a
proportion of the money accumulated by the political elite from the
empire. “You’ve had eight different job opportunities: you’ve been a
barman, you’ ve been a baker; you’ ve tried farming, you’ve worked in the
mint, you’ve been a salesman, now you’rea pot seller — one more job will
make 69!’% That list reminds us once again that one feature of the world
of the ¢aberna and officina was production. It is only on the extreme, literal
interpretation of the demand for panem et circenses that the view that
Rome was a Great Wen, an all-consuming parasite, is based, and that
view sits uneasily with the image of Rome the ‘common workshop of the
world’. The inhabitants of Rome produced very substantial quantities of
finished goods, and the fact that the economic and social conditions of
their employment could not be much more different from the manufac-
turing activities that began in Europe in the early modern period should
not obscure the fact that, within the economy of west central Italy at
least, Rome did not consume wholly without return.”

Not that we intend to overemphasize the technically productive
aspects of the employment of the p/ebs /ibertina. As would be expected,
given their basically servile origins, many were devoted to what we
could label ‘service employments’. The familiae urbanae of the great and
their libertine peripheries, forming a distinctive section of the plebs, if
not a major subdivision, should be remembered in this context: in the
late Republic they were in the process of gathering size and importance
as the heads of the great political domus gained power and status in the
increasingly exclusive political game. The process culminated in the
enormous familiae of the grandees of the Augustan period (and, beyond
the period which is primarily our concern here, in the familia Caesaris
itself).°° The operae which were, at least in theory, owed by many a freed
person to his or her patronus or patrona kept the domestic connexion alive
and could substantially reduce the independence of the former slave.
That limited freedom made the freedman an excellent agent of the
patron, reliable and answerable for his actions but not so closely
associated with the patron as to infect him with the taint of ignoble

% Graffito, NSA 1958, 128 no. 268 (slightly adapted in translation), from the Praedia luliae Felicis
(11, VII, 10) at Pompeii.

97 The idea of Rome as the ‘Consumption City’ goes back to A. Sombart and Max Weber: see
Finley 1973 (A 31) ch. 5; Hopkins 1978 (G 123); P. Garnsey and R. P. Saller, The Roman Empire,
Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley, 1987) 58-9. The alternative view of Rome as part of a much
more complex economy, locally within west central Italy and in the world at large, is discussed at
greater length in CAH Vol. xr.

98 See Roddaz and Fabre 1982 (G 214).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

670 I7. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

employment. Hence the involvement of the freedman in business, trade
and finance, not restricted of course to the city of Rome but distributed
Mediterranean-wide according to the geography of the economic
interests of the Roman elite. Here again the years after the Rutilian
reform of ¢. 118 B.c. were the formative period.”
For various reasons the authority of the patronus might be limited, or
non-existent; in some circumstances a freedman might have no patron,
or cease to have one.!° So the economic activities of freedmen were to
some extent conducted for their own benefit, and not all the Roman
world of work had its impetus in the greed of the elite, important motive
force though that was. At the humblest level it is clear that there was an
extensive labour market at Rome: people were available for hire as
’ general labourers, and diurnae operae were a feature of daily life. Being
generally available for such labour, conducticius, was recognized as one of
the most demeaning options for the free: that reflects its commonness.!0!
Of all the activities of such labourers, the one most easily overlooked
by us who live in the post-industrial world is probably porterage:
fetching and carrying at a moment’s notice, the very pulse-rate of a huge
conurbation like Rome, above all one where most streets were too
narrow or steep for vehicles (and from the late Republic it was only at
night that those were allowed in the city),1°2 Porterage, and the running
of boats on the river, were activities actually generated by the city and
part of its day-to-day existence.
Again, the physical maintenance of the fabric of the city was a never-
ending process, one of the characteristic activities of the ancient town;
self-regeneration was part of its nature. So the various professions
associated with building were of enormous importance.!03 The depen-
dence of the city’s population on that sort of job can probably be
retrojected, from the times when it is best attested, a considerable way
back into the Republic. It is noteworthy that the contractor for work on
Q. Cicero’s Palatine house could not make satisfactory progress with the
work because of the distracting effect of Clodius’ politics.!0¢ There was
always some kind of building to do; but two kinds need particular
comment. First, the great public buildings sponsored by the upper
classes did most to occupy very large numbers; no figures survive from
the ancient city, but the modest restoration of a limited section of the
ancient aqueduct system of Rome in the sixteenth century, renamed as
the Acqua Felice, occupied 2,000 men for three years, rising at times to
%® Garnsey 1981 (G 99); Fabre 1981 (G 65) esp. maps 1-3; D’Arms 1984 (c $1).
100 Garnsey 1981 (G 99). ‘
'0l Treggiari 1980 (G 248).

Table of Heraclea, Bruns 18, lines 56-61 (FIRA 1 no. 13).

103 See Nicolet in ch. 16 above, pp. 626-7.
104 Cic. OFr. 11.2.2.

‘Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 671

4,000.!95 Fluctuations in the availability of these jobs have been blamed
by some scholars for outbreaks of discontent, and it is remarkable, in
fact, how regular the provision of this sort of work actually seems to
have been.'% Secondly, the increase in the two distinctive forms of
private building, the great domus and suburbana of the wealthy and the
investment-architecture of the ¢aberna and the insula, provided another
link in the network of the life of the city by keeping employment up in
times when public building was not booming. The increasing solidity
and structural uniformity of those buildings, public or private, under-
neath their ornamental veneer, is a sign of the coherence of the labour
force on which they depended; not by any means entirely slaves, but
rather the ordinary city populations of Italy.!°7 The characteristic
architecture of urban Italy from the age of the Gracchi to the baked-brick
revolution of the time of Nero is strongly symptomatic of contemporary
urban society, and was produced directly by the economic forces which
animated that society.

The association of builders, collegium fabrorum, was one of those which
the Romans believed to be of immemorial antiquity, and which during
the last years of the Republic stood the best chance of immunity from the
legislation with which the nervous authorities sought to curb the power
of such associations. !% It is the clearest example of how the characteristic
associations of the city populace originated in the basic conditions of the
functioning of the city. But in general the ancient co/legia of Rome are not
easy to see in the historical record of the late Republic, though we may
guess that they took on new roles and acquired a new meaning with the
general evolution of the life of the city during the second century and
particularly in its last decade. What we can see more clearly is the parallel
emergence of less formal associations of the economically active,
predominantly freedman, plebs. As in the case of tomb-reliefs and
architectural forms, it is in Campania that those new developments are
first visible, and we are probably right to deduce that they originated
there. In the organizations of freedman magistri at Capua and the more
professionally organized and slightly later equivalent at Minturnae!™ we

105 J. Delumeau, Vie économique et sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitié du X Ve siécle (Paris, 1959).

106 Coarelli 1977 (G 42); M. K. Thornton, ‘Julio-Claudian building programs’, Historia 35 (1986)
28-44; and see Nicolet in ch. 16 above, pp. 626-7.

107 Torelli 1980 (G 244), maintaining that alongside the characteristic agricultural changes in the
late Republic these new approaches to building are part of a general and highly significant shift in
production relations.

108 Nervousness: Asc. Pis. 6-7c. The heyday of the coflegium fabrorum was, however, in the
Principate: Pearse 1980 (B 217) and discussion in CAH Vol. x12. For the Republic: Gabba 1984 (Gc

109 ILLRP 724-46, with parallels at Praeneste. Frederiksen 1984 (A 35) ch. 13; for Minturnae:

Johnson 1935 (B 298). Nuanced view of the position of these organizations between public and
private: Flambard 1983 (c 69).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

672 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

see the beginnings of the rise of new social forms to match the new urban
conditions, assisted in the case of Capua by the absence, since the
Hannibalic War, of traditional political institutions which might have
blighted the efflorescence of new types of behaviour. This behaviour is,
in fact, strikingly parapolitical: the freedmen are organized on quasi-
political lines and act in imitation of the elite, dedicating public buildings
under the protection of the traditional gods of the community. Less
traditional is their social openness and potentially subversive character;
in Capua their euergetism, if not illegal, was certainly a bold gesture of
defiance on the part of the old rival of Rome, now arbs trunca; and at
Minturnae the boards of magistri included slaves and, in several cases,
women (the faberna-world was no male domain).!!° During the first
century similar institutions appear in other Italian towns, such as
Pompeii,!", linked to vici and their focal crossroads, the compita; at Sena
Gallica the workmen, opéfices, formed a recognizable sub-group of the
town’s population.!!2 They were often devoted to prominent local cults
(at Tusculum to Castor and Pollux),!!3 especially to Mars and Mercury,
and their religious organization was carried over into their direct heir,
the formal and stereotyped institution of the collegia Augustalinm.'\+

Similarly at Rome the ancient associations of Capitolini and Mercur-
iales and Luperci fulfilled something of the same role; the Mercuriales at
least were certainly connected with business.'!5 The apparitor Clesippus,
whom we have encountered, was magister Capitolinus and magister
Lupercus.1!6 We should not play down their status; Cicero alludes to the
shameful fawning of a Roman egues whom the combined Capitolini and
Mercuriales expelled in the crisis of the corn supply of 56 B.c.:"7 to him
at least membership was significant. Despite such allusions our knowl-
edge is frustratingly incomplete: but it is clear that it was on the activities
and ever-shifting aims of those associations, as manifested in established
festivals like the Compitalia, which were subverted by the new behav-
jour, that much of the characteristic political violence of the late
Republic centred.!18

These groups appear in our evidence because they were politically
important. The way has been long, but we are now in a position to
discuss the other means by which the plebs ‘earned’ the favour shown it
by the elite political faction. Not that it would be proper to separate the
activities of the populace sharply into ‘economic’ and ‘political’: the
dichotomy is simply an investigative convenience. There were many

410 Women’s employments: Kampen 1981 (G 136) 130-7.

‘Mt TLLRP 763. "2 TLLRP 776. 13 ILLRP 59. 4 Ostrow 1985 (B 213).
M5 Livy 11.27, cf. Mommsen at CIL 1? 1004.
16 TLLRP 696. "7 Cic. OFr. 11.6 (5).

18 Capitolini: Coarelli 1984 (c 184). Compitalia: Flambard 1981 (G 68); Lintott 1968 (a 62) 8off.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 673

points of overlap and cross-fertilization between the two worlds, and the
creation, partly accidental, partly intentional, of the half-dependent,
economically active, Roman populace was both an economic phenome-
non and a part of the evolution of Roman politics. Work, membership of
the faberna-world, was one of the ways in which a person aspired to a
social niche. Employment was a form of social inclusion.!!9 The
relationships of the faberna and the insula, of the tomb-relief and the
colleginm, of the familia and the neighbourhood, had their final counter-
part in the comitia, the contio and the riot.

II!

In a famous passage of the Commentariolum Petitionis, the purported letter
of advice directed at Cicero by his brother to help him in his election
campaign of 64 B.c., the author describes the complex organizations
which make up the p/ebs urbana, and on which depend the hopes of the
candidate seeking election.'20 What we know of those social bodies does
not suggest that their existence and political behaviour were necessarily
immemorial, despite the fact that we hear of many of them in a literary
tradition that is ultimately antiquarian and therefore concerned
especially with arcane usages and inexplicable rites. Cases like the famous
equus October, the observances of the Septimontium and the layout of the
shrines of the Arge? may seem to have ancient traditions behind them,
but even in such cases we must not make the assumption that ‘peculiar’
equals old,!?! for in both religion and politics innovation was natural.
With the social changes which we have described the neighbourhoods of
the city changed shape, size, composition and relative importance. There
were numerous old units, vici, pagi, montes, of different sizes and shapes,
which, like the ancient co//egia,!2? offered new advantages to politicians at
the end of the Republic, e.g. to Clodius or, on a larger scale, Augustus,
both astute at building new institutional forms on traditional founda-
tions. The curiae, for example, a very ancient division of the plebs,
survived as entities in the Augustan age: their members did not
understand what they were, but they provided some sense of
belonging.!23

19 Patlagean (see n. 74).

120 Comment. Pet. 30. The work is likelier to be a learned exercise than a genuine letter, but is
probably based on good late Republican sources: Henderson 1950 (B 44); David et af. 1973 (B 25).

121 North 1976 (H 93) and ch. 19 below.

122 Flambard 1981 (G 68) stresses, against Waltzing 1895-1900 (G 254) that the vici, like the pagi
and montes, were essentially collegiate. See also Crook 1986 (B 20) on pagani and montani and their
association with new arrangements for the urban infrastructure as it came under increasing strain:
they saw to some aspects of the distribution of channelled water.

123 Ov. Fast, 11.527-32.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

674 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

Some of the montes and pagi, whether or not they were the linear
descendants of the first pre-urban hilltop village communities of Rome,
can be seen taking on new life in the first century B.c., administering their
property, enjoying benefactions and setting up inscriptions like auton-
omous political bodies.!24 They are indeed the ‘public meetings, almost
Councils’ (‘conventicula, quasi concilia’), of Cicero’s speech De Domo,!25
and have a prominent place in the subdivided polity of the advice in the
Commentariolum Petitionis.

A subdivided polity was the natural consequence of the social and
eonomic conditions we have described. The transience of the Roman
urban population made of its subdivisions similarly temporary associa-
tions which formed and dissolved relatively frequently, changing their
character and importance. But the associations of the more or less
accidentally juxtaposed individuals had a vital part to play in conferring a
social — and political — identity on the flowing population (‘lieux de
passage, d’intégration progressive 4 la cité officielle’).!26 More than mere
‘friendly societies’, they provided structures of belonging which were
the only means of protection against the insecurity of life in the
anonymous crowds of the perilous urban environment.

The associative tendency is thus more significant than the classifica-
tion of the forms it took, which could not but be highly labile. Hence the
new life of the probably immemorial montes and pagi. The vici, another
subdivision (‘parts of the urban continuum defined by district or
communications for the sake of convenience’, Festus called them),!27
seem first to have acquired political prominence during the troubles of
the 80s B.c. — too much prominence, since it was found necessary to
repress their principal form of self-expression, the ‘crossroad games’
(ludi compitalicii), during the 6os. It was as vehicles for corporate activity
of this kind that the véci were important, and we should not see them as
‘wards’ like the parish-based divisions of mediaeval western cities, or as
the transplanted rural villages whose immiscible identities created the
cellular fabric of the Islamic metropolis.!28 They were closer in character
to the less topographically identifiable associations, the co//egia, which
bound together those who shared a cult or a craft, many of which arose
naturally out of the economy of the ¢aberna as did the vici, pagi and montes
out of the physical form of the city. They naturally served as the means of
expression of discontent, but their purpose was to provide labels for the
ever-changing social groups, as we can see in the passion with which
they fought the repression which would dissolve their cohesion — such as
the authorities’ attempts to destroy the worship of Isis which was central

124 ILLRP 698-9. 125 Cic. Dom. 74.

'26 Flambard 1981 (G 68) 166; and see n. 118 above. 127 Festus soz.
128 Frederiksen 1976 (G 79) for the various meanings of vicus.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 675

to the existence of the Capitolini.!29 The zeal for new associations can be
seen in the cult of Stata Mater, which was created for a statue left
untouched in a devastating fire in the early first century B.C.; a vicus was
named for the cult, a potent reflection of one of the perennial anxieties of
the life of the city.!30 The confidence implied in the Commentariolum was
inappropriate; such organs were of populace, not plebs, and they were
not pawns of the elite political chessboard.

In this flux p/ebs and elite are mixed inseparably. Although some sites
at Rome for aristocratic houses were much more sought after than
others, places of political significance like Sacra Via or Forum, or of
natural amenity like Tiber bank or hilltop, that did not create urban
zoning according to wealth. The wealthy were always surrounded by the
lower in status; indeed by the lowest, since they could not but live
alongside their numerous slaves, and their part in the tight social net
described in section 11 also meant that they had frequent contact with the
taberna-world. The rich houses were fringed with such properties to let.
Topographical juxtaposition thus gave the houses of the elite a place in
the social subdivisions of the city, expressed also through the relation-
ships of their inhabitants. The contiguity of the rich with the low in
status is crucial to understanding the vertical structures of patronage and
economic and social interest that bound them together, and the political
behaviour that resulted.!3!

The character of the subdivisions of the p/ebs resulted in part from
their connexions with a range of patrons: in a collegium the connexion
might be mainly economic; in a vicus, property or topographical context;
in some cases the link was manumission, as with Sulla and the younger,
fitter slaves of his victims, the 10,000 ‘Cornelii’, whom he freed, ‘so many
that they actually made a colleginm’ ,'32 or with the great households of the
Augustan age. However based, the relationship was not simply passive
or static. The political activities of the plebeians, in comitia, contio or riot,
were integral to the way the city worked, and were always, like all aspects
of the life of the urban population, motivated by the demands for
allegiance by those higher up the edifice of patronage. Violent interven-
tion in public events usually had a political point, just as the public
display itself did; witness the neat response of the p/ebs to the snub to
Lucullus by Q. Caecilius, his equestrian client, in leaving him out of his
will: they smashed up his funeral.'!53 Politicians who suffered from the
collective action of the urban populace would raise the spectre of the
collapse of all public order — freedmen were often blamed for fire-raising
and general disorder — but in practice Roman urban society showed a
remarkable stability; the violence of Roman politics owed more to the

129 Coarelli 1984 (c 184). 130 Festus 317L. 131 Veyne 1979 (G 251) 273-4.
132 Asc. Corn. 75c. 133 Val. Max. v1.8.5,

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

676 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

politicians than to any popular ideology of class-hatred.!34 However, in
the turbulent conditions of the late Republic the instability of the
groupings and the ease with which they were manipulated greatly
increased, hence Augustus’ careful attempt to crystallize the framework
of the popular organizations to a greater extent, giving them eras,
magistrates, patrons, a legal role, in an attempt to fix the flux somewhat
and calm its political destructiveness.

This threatening potential was already observable when Appius
Claudius Pulcher confronted Scipio Aemilianus over the election to the
censorship of 142 in the Forum in the midst of a throng of ‘men of low
birth and former slaves, familiar with the Forum and quite capable of
getting together a mob and having their way on any subject whatsoever
thanks to its din and determination’.!35 Pulcher’s attack, invoking the
horror of the shade of Aemilianus’ father at the indignity of relying on
the support of ‘Aemilius the praeco {huckster] and Licinius Philonicus the
publicanus {contractor]’, depends on the relative novelty of such behav-
iour. Not that such people were the lowest of the low in either status or
means: this is a nice case of distortion of the long perspective of
diminishing plebeian statuses from the viewpoint of the higher aristoc-
racy. But it is the mob that they could control which is truly significant
here: the ever-growing population of Rome, with new political conse-
quences for everyone. It is no coincidence that that is the time when,
after a long interval, ‘we find evidence of increased readiness by the
tribunes to adopt a popular role’.!36 Part of the cause for that no doubt
lay in the injustices of recruitment and the domestic and overseas
miseries of the poor: but the potential power of the newly growing
populace and its links with the elite were the main cause. The two types
of explanation are closely connected in any case, as we shall see.

In the same period the formal roles played by the popu/us in Roman
politics were removed from the constraints of space in the old circular
comitium in front of the senate-house. From 145 the passing of legislation,
from after 142 the regular election of magistrates, and from the time of C.
Gracchus contiones were all moved to less restricted venues — legislation
and the contiones to the main body of the Forum, which was now an
architectural setting of some grandeur, thanks to the censors of the early
part of the century — and the election of magistrates to the Campus
Martius.!3’ The simple need to accommodate greater numbers was the
obvious pretext for those changes, but it is hard not to see in them an
appreciation, on the part of popular politicians, of the potential fora new
kind of democracy. Such innovations transformed the formal power of

134 Hahn 1975 (G 112); Lincott 1968 (a 62) esp. ch. 12; Brunt 1974 (G 23); Vanderbroeck 1987 (c

279). 135 Plut. Paull. 38.4; see also Praec. reip. ger. 14 (Moralia 8108).
136 Brunt 1971 (A 17) 65. 137 Coarelli 1985 (B 277) 11-21.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 677

the swelling population and gave a great stimulus to that growth of its
informal power which Pulcher had perceived.

The new complexity of the organization of the p/ebs resisted the
maintenance of social control along the lines which had characterized the
middle Republic, and a new relationship was slow to develop. The
impossibility of relying on the older forms of coercitio was clear by the end
of the second century, and the forms which were to replace it were only
then nascent.!38 In the gap the plebs became, and remained into the
Empire (as chapter 16 of Volume x will show), a political force of a new
kind. For all the parallels drawn, at this time and later, by politically acute
historians and historically minded politicians, this was a very different
kind of popular politics from that which succeeded in the Struggle of the
Orders.!39 Rome was no longer a city state. The numbers involved
reflected that: the walk-out of the plebs as a protest, successful in Rome’s
early history, was hardly an option in the age of the Gracchi. The
economic and social world described in section 1 had come into being,
more intricate and mutable than anything in the fifth and fourth
centuries. The controversies of the second half of the second century are
described in detail in other chapters. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus,
Servilius Glaucia and Appuleius Saturninus certainly took advantage of
the new social situation to attempt a readjustment of the constitution of
Rome definitely in favour of the democratic element. The proposed
changes concerned the most basic institutions of the Roman state. The
mood was rather different from that of the half-century which followed
the Social War, and although the popular politicians of the second
century served as precedents for those of the age of Cicero and Caesar,
and the populace acquired aspirations and self-confidence which formed
the necessary foundation for its later self-assertiveness, we should
distinguish the two epochs. By the early Empire, if not by the Augustan
period, it was held that it was after the Social War that the aristocracy had
withered while the plebs gained in power — as was allegedly portended
by the relative health of the patrician and plebeian myrtle-bushes in front
of the temple of Quirinus.!%0

The first dramatic quickening of popular vigour is to be seen in the
civil troubles of the 80s. That period saw the forcible incorporation of
the new Italian citizens, and no doubt a vast increase in the scale of
movement to and from Rome, which meant a serious intensification of
the new social patterns. A story like that of Marius Gratidianus
illustrates the savagery of public violence on the part of the dynasts,

138 Nippel 1988 (a 85); Lintott 1968 (A 62) ch. 7.

139 Pace Ungern-Sternberg 1986 (F 164) though he brings out many real continuities between the
earlier struggle and later popular politics.

40 Pliny HN xv.120-1; Richard 1986 (B 97); Lintott 1987 (A 65) sot.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

678 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

which brought to a bloody end the man ‘than whom no one has ever
been dearer to the plebs’.!4! The plebs had responded spectacularly to his
measures for the control of debt, which had become an impossible
burden in the aftermath of the Social War and of Rome’s eastern
difficulties — a sign of strain in the economic aspect of the life of the
populace. The voting tribes undertook the dedication of statues to him
in every vicus — it is the first time we hear of such action by the ¢ribus, or of
the political importance of the vic7 of the city;'42 and the statues were the
objects of worship with libations, incense, and candles, as had previously
been those of the Gracchi and the places where they fell. The terrible
example made in public of this popular hero by the victorious Sulla, like
the brutality of the more famous Marii, father and son, belongs in the
context of the popular spectacle and the institutionalization of violence.
A gruesome public exhibition was the form of punishment which suited
the practitioners of popular politics, and it was the result of the culture of
the populace, not an imposition from above.!*3

The politics of the p/ebs urbana were in part its own. It was not a slate
on which the schemers of the Senate wrote whatever they wanted. The
culture and social forms of the many were not the product of skilled
formation by the aristocrats: they were agents too. If Cicero, Sallust and
Plutarch were reluctant to allow that, we must not share their error. At
the base of the popular culture lay the shared insecurity of marginality:
the urban population was united by the precariousness of belonging.

The plebs suffered from various disadvantageous aspects of the
circumstances which had allowed its formation. First, its simple aggre-
gation, especially in a topographically convoluted place like Rome, made
it vulnerable to flood, fire, disease and food-shortage.'44 Secondly, the
social structures of the world of the taberna and insula as they evolved
through the second century brought their own problems: the system
depended on money, and money brought debt as a major disaster.
Whenever there was a crisis of credit or a debasement of the coinage the
repercussions on urban Roman society were terrible: they can be
explored in the time of Gratidianus and the age of Cicero and observed in
the agitation of the late 20s B.c. and on into the latter part of the reign of
Tiberius.!45 Simply being part of the city cost money. Rent was one of
the more obvious cases: as we observed before, the dwellers in the

141 Cic. Off. 111.80. 42 Pliny HN xxxrv.27.

143 Brutality of Roman public life: Wiseman 1985 (B 127) 5-10; Lintott 1968 (A 62) ch. 3; cf. M.
Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans, A. Sheridan (Harmondsworth, 1977) 32-
69. On the proscriptions: Hinard 1985 (A 52) esp. 40-51.

144 Flood: Le Gall 1953 (G 144) 27-35; fire, collapse, disease: Scobie 1986 (G 223); food-shortage:
Garnsey 1988 (G 100); Virlouvet 1985 (G 252).

145 Debt: Frederiksen 1966 (G 78); C. Rodewald, Money in the Age of Tiberius (Manchester, 1976);
Yavetz 1970 (G 263). See also Nicolet in ch. 16 above, pp. 641~2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 679

speculative insula were, by definition, not destitute (though they might
pay rent only a day ata time), but they might become desperate. In 7 B.c.
it was believed that debtors had started a serious fire on the calculation
that their debts might be remitted because of the scale of their losses.'46
The indebtedness did not entail their being destitute — until the debt was
called in. Direct oppression of a terrifying kind was usually the result of
insolvency; the urban plebeian was, no doubt, as often the victim as the
agent of violence. The perils of loss of status and loss of all means were
very real: poverty at Rome was seen more as a disaster which struck
suddenly than as a continuing state — like the hope of sudden gain, part of
the day-to-day existence of the society. Beyond disabling penury lay the
danger of enslavement, no doubt effectively reducing the numbers of
destitute.!4”7 The precariousness and the risks were direct consequences
of the system which kept the plebs together and linked it to the elite
which was the principal source of finance from outside the zone of the
city.

Living in a threatening environment in a system in which your
personal status was always under threat, alongside many thousands of
others competing for the only possibilities of survival and improvement
— to this the natural response was the elaboration of more or less
permanent groups to provide security of a sort and pool resources and
opportunities. That underlies the changing political role of the populace
from the Social War onwards. We can see it clearly in Cicero’s alarm at
the escalation of violence in popular politics.!48

Cicero’s speeches present us with a consistent portrait of the threat.
He conjures up a Rome in which every way in which the populace can
combine or act collectively will be seized on and turned to the
destruction of all that is right. The tribes are suspect: Clodius ‘called up
the tribes, put himself in command, enrolled a whole new /ribus Collina
by recruiting all the lowest citizens’!* (significantly it was legal to offer
favours to one’s own tribe, but not to others). The word ‘recruiting’
suggests the corruption of military service and the fear of the plebeian
turned soldier which lasted well into the Empire; the paramilitary
language is a feature of this kind of invective.!5° The fear of the economic
solidarity of the ¢abernarii and those who live by daily labour, those who
are united by a particular trade, is another recurrent theme, as when
Cicero sketches Catiline’s client ‘the agent provocateur of the tabernari? , the

146 Dio. Lv.8.6.

147 Debt-enslavement was not legal in the late Republic; but the free frequently found themselves
in slave-prisons, ergastula, if they could not establish their free status, and that was a serious risk at
Rome, especially in times of civil disturbance. Voluntary entry into slavery as a means of self-
improvement: Crook 1967 (F 41) 59-60.

448 Flambard 1977 (c 193); Brunt 1974 (G 23).

149 Cic, Mil. 87. 150 Cic. Sest. 34.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

680 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

lapidator.‘5' The hurling of stones and the threat of arson are the two
great — highly appropriate — weapons of the distinctively urban mob.!52
The relations which bound the patron to his slaves and former slaves
could also be perverted: ‘at his home laws were being drawn up which
would make us the property of our slaves’; ‘he made our slaves his
freedmen’.!53

Even the charismatic public appearances on which the elite relied
could be subverted by simple imitation, or by more or less comic
heckling and interpolations. A popular hero who claimed to be the son
of the younger Marius returned from death had the temerity to speak to
Caesar’s audience at a great epu/um in his suburban 4ort7, without the
dictator realizing at first — Caesar was standing between the columns of a
portico, and his rival was entertaining the company from the invisible
vantage-point of the next intercolumnation.!54

In this last case we see at its clearest the rivalry for control of the social
structures that had arisen out of plebeian insecurity. Despite Cicero’s
constant outrage, that rivalry was, of course, shared by all Roman
politicians. As the insecurity on which the associations and organisms of
Roman city life were founded became more and more intense, the
possibilities for exploiting it expanded and the rewards grew. Caesar
defeated the false Marius, and put into practice much of what Clodius
had been unable to;'55 Augustus did more, with new tribal organiza-
tions, new festivals, new paramilitary organizations for co/legia, new
parapolitical offices at all levels of city life. But behind the whole process,
from the middle Republic, when the distinctive social and economic
structures of Rome were forming, through the period of strain and crisis,
to the Imperial system, lie the rewards for which the insecure plebeians
were striving and the baits with which the elite entrapped them. As
Cicero put it,456 Rome was a kind of perverted democracy where the
allegiance of groups of the foolish and ignoble could be won by the
provision of leisure and comfort, where political decisions could be
expected of cobblers and girdlemakers after they had been stuffed at
public banquets. The reality or otherwise behind this picture of
enticement forms the subject of the last section.

In 309 B.c. the dictator Papirius Cursor gave the gilded shields of the
Samnites over whom he triumphed to the owners of the sabernae

51 Cic. Dom. 13. 152 Lintott 1968 (A 62) 6-10. 153 Cic. Mil. 87 and 89.
154 Val. Max. 1x.14.5. The false Marius: Scardigli 1980 (c 254); Rini 1983 (G 213); and see the
discussion of the informal politics of the spectacles in Vol. x2, ch. 15.

155 Dio. xt.60.4 on Caesar’s relations with other people’s freedmen.
156 Cic. Flac. 15-17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 681

argentariae in the Forum. Livy tells us that from then on began the
practice of decorating the centre of the city on special occasions:!57 it is
clear that the trophies were to be brought out to contribute to future
festivities. The practice that started then is a significant step towards the
developed system by which the plebs was involved in the public success
of the great in the city as an agent, as an integral part of what was going
forward. The ‘rinmphator gave the grateful plebeians the means to
commemorate his greatness: that simple formula is the secret of the
relationship between the elite and the people of the city. It is far more
common than the concerned popular welfare measure, and it was
responsible for keeping the process which we know as Rome in steady
movement: without it the next generation would never have arrived
from elsewhere and the present one would have done well to flee. Too
much concentration on what we would have hated in ancient Rome,
noise, squalor, stench, lack of privacy, danger, disease, prevents us from
appreciating the calculus of goods the Romans might have used, in
which rewards we find nearly incomprehensible, the range of perceived
benefits summed up in the phrase ‘urbanum otium’, acted to balance
degradation, misery and fear.!58 Instead of producing more studies of the
obvious urban problems, we need to pay attention to the nature of the
gains in status and other benefits, and to how the concentrated
benefaction of the rulers of the Mediterranean to some extent succeeded
in ‘aristocratizing’ the populace in Rome.!59

The ideology of benefaction was not, of course, unique to Rome.
Other cities too had long gained from the wish of their notables to make
clear how splendid, noble and fortunate they were by spending their
resources in bettering the lot of the generality of their fellow-citizens.
The betterment took the form, naturally enough, of moving up the scale
of material goods towards the high lifestyle of the very wealthy, and
success was measured by how high on that scale were the community’s
shared facilities. By the Imperial period we find that Rome is the
outstanding example of this tendency. It remains to inquire how it
became so.

Behind the inquiry lies the Romans’ own perception that from the war
against Pyrrhus onwards the material comfort and extravagance of life in
the city grew steadily.!° There were various landmarks along the way. It
is important to notice that the perception applies to the whole city: some
notoriously debauched individuals feature in the narration, but it is the
widespread corruption of luxury that we are told about. Thanks to Pliny

157 Livy 1x.qo.16.

158 On the latter: Ramage 1983 (G 206); Scobie 1986 (G 223).

159 Veyne 1990 (G 250) 201-61.

160 The Romans’ own attitudes to this process and its moral consequences: Levick 1982 (A 61).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

682 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

the Elder in particular we have quite a store of the conventional dates at
which items of the standard equipment of Roman high living were
thought to have arrived — good food and wine, baths, building materials,
clothing, habits, spectacles and amenities. The progression — a phenome-
non of Roman self-awareness — fits very closely the evolution of the
relations between ex-slave and freeborn that has been sketched here.

Although Etruscans, Greeks and Orientals all had, in the tradition,
elements of high living to offer the wealthy, the place where all three met,
Campania, had a particularly important role in diffusing luxury towards
Rome. How it grew up there it is not our present purpose to inquire, but
it does seem as if the natural resources of the region came to generate a
very dense population and a most phenomenal wealth. Capua’s luxury
was a byword and was the more extraordinary for being, as at Sybaris
before, diffused widely throughout society. So it is in Campania that the
amenities of the more expansive style of Hellenistic architecture reach
the West, that public baths develop in the natural hot springs of the
coast, that the solution of the amphitheatre is devised for the problem of
admitting the people to the exclusive excitements of the rich, that an
economy develops to service all this, and that some political awareness
grows with it on the part of many of the ordinary populace.'¢!

The games of the amphitheatre are a good example. According to our
records, the first occasion on which gladiators were presented as a piece
of aristocratic display whose provision added to the prestige of both
donor and audience was the funeral of D. Iunius Brutus Pera in 264 B.c.
when three pairs were displayed. In 216 it was twenty-two pairs; in 200,
twenty-five; in 183, sixty; in 174 B.C. seventy-four;, though there were
other occasions in the year when the entertainment could be found ona
much smaller scale.!62 The escalation of display is apparent, but the pace
modest; the plebeians of the age of the Gracchi knew that their
entertainment was a privilege of relatively recent origin. The first
quarter of the first century sees the open cultivation of this activity by the
most influential men of the state: Sulla in particular, with his /adi
Victoriae Sullanae, made the giving of great public entertainments
axiomatic for a princeps.

Sulla was of course also known for his connexion with the men and
women who created and played in the increasingly diverse theatrical life
of the city, which had been developed alongside the social position of
its audience.'63 In 155 B.c. it had been thought useful to house the
spectacle in a permanent theatre of stone, like those of many other Italian
towns: architecture and the interests of the plebs were again linked. But
the consul and pontifex maximus Scipio Nasica had the building demo-

161 Frederiksen 1984 (a 35) ch. 14; Gros 1978 (G 109). 162 Livy XL1.28.10.
163 Weber 1983 (G 256) chs. 6 and 8; Garton 1964 (c 61).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 683

lished — not the last time that that nobleman found it necessary to take an
uncompromising stand against the wishes of the plebs. There were
further setbacks, but the various branches of theatrical life flourished
despite them and grew into an integral part of the daily life and method
of self-expression of the plebs, as well as one of the corner-stones of their
new political activity. The spread of ‘theatre politics’ via the economy of
the Mediterranean among the commercial classes of southern Italy, and
its setting within the freedman world and the new urban society of the
city, made it a phenomenon highly characteristic of the period.'®

The background to the rise in popularity of the gladiatorial spectacles
should be sought in the place in urban Roman society of the /udi in
general. The /udi underwent a development parallel in many ways to the
growth of the distinctive social patterns examined in this chapter. They
were grounded firmly in the corporate religiosity of the city population,
and were acts of divine worship demanding large-scale participation by
the inhabitants of Rome, decorating their homes and neighbourhoods,
and performing a multitude of individual observances while sharing in
the group activities of the games themselves. So the ‘crossroad games’
and the various recreations of the plebs, at the festival of Anna Perenna,
for example,'® were the occasions underlying the grander celebrations
paid for by the state and its officials. Those appear first to have acquired a
place in the display of the aristocracy during the third century, and some
have seen a division between the high-class displays, at the /udi Megalenses
from 204, and a plebeian-oriented response, with the regularization of
the /udi Plebeii (at the expense of the plebeian aediles) and, possibly in
direct response to the Megalenses, the /udi Cereales, which likewise had
plebeian associations. The violence of Clodius’ disruption of the
Megalenses may have had something to do with this kind of tension. It is
clear enough at least that the last quarter of the second century saw a
great escalation in the importance of the /udi at Rome, which continued
over the next generation. At one level the religious observance bound
Rome to the gods in years of crisis; at another the begnnings of the vast
growth in the scale of Roman urban society and its instabilities made
inevitable the creation of new forms of expression of solidarity and
incorporation, especially in the face of critical military peril from
outside. It is significant that the next period of expansion of the numbers
of days devoted to the /udi and creation of new ones, which initiates the
much more unrestrained inflation of the holiday-phenomenon under the
Empire, is the age of Sulla. By the time of Caesar’s death the Roman
populace enjoyed fifty-nine days of the great /udi every year.'% A
statement from the first century A.D. sums up the process, succinctly

164 Wiseman 1985 (B 128). 165 Ov. Fast. v.5 23-42.
166 Development and character of che /udi: Scullard 1981 (H 117); Rawson 1981 (G 210).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

684 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

describing the extension of privilege to the plebs: on feast days ‘the right
to luxury is given to the people at large’, ‘ius luxuriae publice datum
est’.167

The physical setting was improved at the same time. The censors of
204 systematized the approaches to the open space in the great valley on
the south side of the city, the Circus Maximus, the traditional location for
many of the old festival games: in 196 L. Stertinius dedicated a
monumental arch there to commemorate his activities in Spain.'©8 That
was a natural development, for there the monumenta of victorious
generals had been built for a century, and the transition to the
beautification of the setting of the spectacles was easy. By the end of the
190s the seating of spectators had received legislative attention: in 174
the censors contracted for major works connected with the games;
elaborate beast-hunts appeared there from 169.'6° The political import-
ance of the games a century later emerges clearly in the provision by the
great of the age of Cicero of places for their clients in whatever buildings
overlooked the now crowded valley;!7° but we must remember that
resistance to the new ways somewhat retarded the development (com-
pare the ancient ruling of the Senate against beast-shows, which had to
be overthrown by tribunician legislation).!7! And just as, in the end, the
first permanent theatres and amphitheatres of Rome were the work of
Pompey and the Augustan age, so the monumental shaping of the Circus
Maximus like a gigantic hairpin is due above all to the work of Caesar,
right at the end of the Republic.

Nor did the elite have a monopoly of the giving of /udi. The
inscriptions show us the arranging of /udi by the officials of the humble
organizations examined above — and, characteristically, it is in Campa-
nia, with the magistri of Capua, that we find the earliest dated example,
from 108 B.C.;!72 and not much later from Rome comes the record of the
‘magistri Herculis first to be appointed after a vote of the pagus’ holding
games likewise.!73 New officials, democratic organization and the spread
of the /udi are all to be seen together in this document. The /vdi in
question are more probably the games of the stage, /udi scaenici (as the
Minturnae evidence makes plain): it was not until the Augustan age,
when we find freedmen giving gladiatorial munera in the towns of Italy,
that the low in status could aspire to give so prestigious an entertainment
as that. But in /udi scaenici too the city population found much to admire;
in the second century B.c. at Amiternum the slave of one Cloelius
described himself as ‘the sweet mime-artist who time and again provided

167 Sen. Ep. 18.1. 168 Livy XXx111.27.4.

169 Development of the Circus Maximus: Humphrey 1986 (G 126) 60-75.
170 Cic. Mur. 73. 1 Pliny HN vuit.64.

172 [LLRP 727. 3 ILLRP 701.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 685

the fun of delectable light entertainment for the populus’,'74 and later a
henchman of Clodius of the same name furthered his patron’s political
activities through management of the compitalicial games. The dissigna-
tor Decumus, who has also sometimes been seen as a dependant of
Clodius, established a troupe of singers in Greek, who had their own
officials and patron and managed a common burial place in the suburbs
of the city.!75 The elaboration of the organizations of the plebs, their
intimate link with the world of public entertainment, and the long chains
of dependence leading up to the elite can be traced in such accidentally
surviving records.!7%

In the passage from his defence of Murena quoted above,!”’ about the
immorality of buying up whole tabernae alongside the Circus to provide a
good view for the ¢ribules whose votes are required in return, Cicero
draws a close and revealing parallel — that of the free meal, to which he
actually devotes more attention, and whose centrality to the whole
political system of Rome by 63 B.c., could hardly be more lucidly
expounded than it is in that speech. That practice too has a history
recorded in well-known anecdotes, and we can scarcely be surprised to
find that it conducts us once again to that epoch of change, the late
second century, when the Stoic Tubero offended the plebs by his
austerity in his share of the funeral banquet for Aemilianus (129 B.c.) to
such an extent that he failed subsequently to be elected praetor. As
Cicero says, the Roman people hated private luxury but revelled in
public display;!78 or asa later telling of the story puts it: ‘the City felt that
it was not just the limited number of guests at that dinner but itself in all
its entirety that had been lying on the rough hides; and got its own back
for this embarrassment of the meal on election day’.!79 So there was still
room for austerity in 129, and numbers were still small. It was over the
next century that the escalation took place, producing the corrupt
democracy of Cicero’s sneer,!8° at the mercy of over-fed and foolish
cobblers and belt-makers. The common meal, resembling the /ydi of
which it often formed part, and sharing their religious overtones, was
one of the great expressions of the community life of the plebs. The
various local and social organizations provided them: Varro comments
on how the ever more numerous dinners of the co/legia raised prices in the
provision market,'8! and we are reminded of the direct economic link
between those forms of behaviour and the economic character of the
city: the epa/am would not have been possible without the ¢aberna. But the
greatest of such occasions were the triumphal banquets of conquering
generals. Popular rumour had it that the great Aemilius Paullus had the

‘4 ILLRP 804. 5 ILLRP 9771. % Frézouls 1983 (G 80).
17 See n. 170. 18 Cic. Mur. 76, cf. Flac. 28.
179 Val. Max. vit.s.t. 180 Cic, Flac. 15-17. 181 Varro Rust. 1.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

686 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

maxim that ‘the organization of a feast and the giving of games were the
business of the man who knew how to win wars’.!82 Those of Julius
Caesar, which raised the threshold of competition and started chains of
imitation in other towns of Italy and the provinces, were particularly
significant. From Caesar’s time, just as the gladiatorial display is given
more often by people of lower status, so too the wine and sweetcake
party becomes a common feature of municipal life.183

Such feasts, along with the various other signs of magnificentia to which
the plebs expected to be treated, supplied the ratson d’étre for the new
public architecture of the late Republic. Vitruvius specified great halls
and spacious colonnades for the house of the statesman because of the
numbers of visitors it was his job to receive,'84 and the public architec-
ture of the city developed in the same way. With the temples that were
the traditional monumentum of the successful aristocrat there came
increasingly to be associated places in which the general public might
benefit further from his felicity. The porticoes of the temples themselves
became wider, and the temples were placed in precincts. In the
surrounding colonnades could be admired the works of art which were
either the spoils of victory or the product of the general’s later
expenditure. The architecture became more and more luxuriant, and was
used to share with the people not just the statues and paintings which had
been the private delight of foreign potentates but rare plants and animals
too, signs of the power of their donors even over nature.!85

In the development of such buildings from the middle of the second
century onwards (the first of the series is the Porticus Octavia of 168 B.C.)
we can see much of the growing interdependence between elite ‘actors’
and the audience of the city. But in that case also the plebeians can be
found as agents, as when they write their own texts, bearing demands for
land for the needy, on porticus, muri and monumenta — i.e. among the
written and visual messages of the elite.!8° Pompey’s major buildings of
$5 B.c. (probably following Sulla) are a turning-point — the temple he
placed at the top of the cavea of the great theatre with which he dared to
break the ancient prohibition against making such buildings permanent;
and the vast porticus with densely planted gardens and famous paintings,
such as the Cadmus and Europa of Antiphilus, that stretched out behind
the stage-building. Pompey thus trumped even the fantastic extrava-

182 Polyb. xxx.14, see also Livy xiv.32.11.

183 Banquets for the people: Toller 1889 (G 243); Mrozek 1972 (G 169); Purcell 1985 (G 200). An
early second-century distribution of what must have closely resembled vermouth, mu/sum rutatum:
-Pliny HN x1x.45. See also Val. Max. 11.4.2 for an epulum in 183 B.C.

184 Vitr. vi.5.2.

18 Exotic displays put on in these elaborate settings: Rawson 1976 (G 209).

186 Plut. Grace. 8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA 687

gance of Scaurus’ aedilate of 58 which has also been seen as a turning-
point in the game of luxury benefactions and popular politics.!87 The
close relationship between spectacles and the other forms of munificence
is very apparent.

It was in buildings like this that the great public banquets took place,
though they also had their private equivalent. Anticipating the advice of
Vitruvius, the great men of the late Republic developed the porticus
architecture in their own urban and suburban palaces. Julius Caesar’s
famous Horti in Transtiberim could even be made into a public precinct
like those of the Campus Martius in his will.188 This was the setting of the
incident of the False Marius, and shows us not just how much such an
agitator could dare, but also what it was that Caesar was doing, and how
it fitted the architecture of the Gardens.

Much of the luxury of the late Republic was aimed at a public
reception. The way of life of the great was part of the process of
‘aristocratizing the citizen’ which we have already identified. Doubly so,
for not only was it meant to benefit the populace but it also kept in
existence the officina and the /aberna, which were so essential to the society
of the city. And it was not just by calling into being the taberna-world that
the beneficence and display of the successful elite was more than merely
the conferment of favours on a passive population of inferior recipients;
for those inferiors came by a painful process to have their own active role
and their own ideology of what they wanted: commoda, perquisites. !89
Commoda is a key term in the thought-world of the Roman cities. It
stands at the centre of a system of values which promoted the identity of
otherwise unstable social groups. Those values had their clear physical
expression too, in the relative uniformity of the architectural taste,
decorative repertoire and building methods of the late Republic.!%
Across west central Italy the terraced buildings of the great sanctuaries
and the portico-architecture of villa and forum spread rapidly and
homogeneously. The tastes of the Roman elite have rightly been linked
with this; better, it has been explained as an aspect of a social system. Best
of all is it to see that it was not the practice of the great slave-owning
familia, or the predominance of the wealth-bringing /atifundium, which
brought the development about, but the unique and precarious relation-
ship of the elites with the teeming and ever-changing populations of the
cities, above all Rome. That is the sense in which the singular and

187 Scaurus: Pliny HN vitt.g6. Generally, Millar 1984 (A 75); Coarelli 1983 (G 434), exploring the
connexions between house, theatre and temple as the setting for politically oriented public festivals.

188 Cic. Phil. 11.109; Dio xttv.35.

189 Commoda: Nicolet 1985 (c 232).
9 Ward-Perkins 1977 (G 255); Gros 1978 (G 109); Boethius 1960 (B 264) ch. 2; Torelli 1980 (G

244).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

688 17. ROME AND THE PLEBS URBANA

arresting physical developments of the time must be seen as secondary,
and in which we can say truly that ‘the city is not buildings, but people’ —
the plebs urbana, and, wider, the multifarious human population exper-
iencing the extraordinary life of Rome.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 18

THE INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS OF
THE CICERONIAN AGE

MIRIAM GRIFFIN

In considering the level and nature of intellectual activity in Roman
society, we are bound to be discussing, in the main, the culture of the
Roman and Italian upper classes.! Our evidence is such that it is easier to
gauge their knowledge of Greek than the general level of literacy. We
can note that second-century Roman legislators already assumed that
their laws would be read throughout the peninsula and required that
they be publicly displayed in a place where they could be easily seen; we
can point to the graffiti at Pompeii which show that, in the first century
A.D., in a prosperous town, a substantial proportion of the population
could read and possibly write, though not to a very high standard.? But
such evidence tells us little about the numbers and kinds of people who
could and would read sophisticated Latin prose and verse. There the
most important factor must be the availability of education. One point,
however, is worth making at the outset: that is, the importance of oral
culture. Not only was drama, one of the earliest forms of Latin literature,
accessible without reading, but so was oratory, which was not only the
key to understanding public life but an intellectual and artistic product
that reached its peak of sophistication and polish in this period. Political
and forensic speeches in the Forum were a form of popular entertain-
ment like dramatic performances, and Cicero attests the sensitivity of an
ordinary audience to the arrangement of words and the use of metre or
prose rhythm.3 Other forms of literature too were regularly recited:
indeed the serious study of Latin literature had started in the middle of
the second century when scholars started to prepare the works of
Naevius and Ennius for recitation.‘

' See Rawson 1985(H 109) which surveys all the material except for Cicero’s own works. Still
valuable is Kroll 1933(H 70) chs. 8,11.

2 E.g. Tarentum fragment (Lintott 1982 (B 191) 131 (clause 14), cf. FIR A 1, 9, lines 25~6; Harris
1983 (H58). 3 De Or, 11.195—6, 198; Orat. 173.

4 Suet. Gram. 2. Varro defined grammatica as the study of poets, historians and orators with the
aim of being able to read (aloud), explain, correct the text and evaluate it (GRF nos. 235-6).

689

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

690 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

I. EDUCATION

Cicero, making a contrast with Greek education, notes with approval
that Roman education was not publicly regulated or uniform.> After
their establishment, perhaps in the middle of the third century, fee-
paying primary schools must have become a regular feature of life in
Rome, though, apart from allusions in Plautine comedy, we have little
direct evidence.* Many continued to learn their letters and the rudiments
of arithmetic at home or, with other children, at the home of a neighbour
who had a suitably trained slave, such as Cato’s Chilo.? Secondary
education on the Greek model developed rapidly in the latter part of the
second century. After the visit of the celebrated scholar Crates of Mallos,
the study of language and literature in Greek and Latin (grammatica)
became so popular that by the early first century there were more than
twenty schools in Rome offering instruction.8 The institutionalization of
rhetoric, the secondary stage of education, is firmly attested for the same
period by a censorial edict of 92 B.c. attacking the new schools of Latin
rhetoric as inferior to the Greek ones set up by ‘our ancestors’: a
senatorial decree of 161 B.c. directed against philosophers and rhetores
had made no mention of schools.? Yet a more domestic setting was often
preferred by the upper classes. Thus Cicero and his brother were taught
along with their cousins and others, including Atticus, in the house of
the consular orator L. Licinius Crassus, and in the next generation we
find Cicero supervising the instruction of his son and nephew by trained
grammarians and rhetoricians.!°

For further training in rhetoric and law, both essential to a public
career, a more informal kind of apprenticeship was customary: so Cicero
and others listened to Q. Mucius Scaevola the augur giving legal
opinions to those who consulted him, and heard and imitated the great
orators of the day.!! In Cicero’s youth it was becoming the custom to go
abroad as part of one’s education, in order to hear Greek philosophers
and rhetoricians.!2 But already in the preceding century, Romans on
public duty in the East had started to avail themselves of this kind of
edification and entertainment,!3 while the aristocratic household in

5 Rep.1v.3. © Bonner 1977 (H 16) 34ff. 7 Plut. Cat. Mai. 20.3. 8 Suet. Gram. 2~3.4.

9 Suet. Gram. 25.1; Gell. N.A xv.11, see also Cic. De Or. 11.133 (dramatic date 91 B.c.): ‘istorum
magistrorum ad quos liberos nostros mittimus’.

0 Cic. De Or. 1.2; Nep. Alt. 1.1; Cic. OFr. 11.4, 2; 11.13 (12),25 11.3, 4; Aft.vi.t, 12, cf. Suet.
Gram.7.2 for M. Antonius Gnipho who first taught in the home of Julius Caesar.

| Brut, 306; 304-5.

12 Brut. 315-6; Fin.v.1ff; Acad. 1.12 (Varro and Brutus); Suet. Iu/. 4.1 (Caesar). See also Cic. Off.
t.t; Pam. xvi.2z1 (Cicero’s son).

'3 Cic. De Or. 111.74-53 1.45 (L. Licinius Crassus, cos. 95 B.c.); 1.82 (M. Antonius, cos. 100 B.C.);
111.68 (Metellus Numidicus, cos. 109 B.c.). In the next generation: Acad. 11.11 (Lucullus); Strab.

x1.1,6; Pliny HN vu.112; Plut. Pomp. 42.4; 75.3-4 (Pompey); Cic. Brut. 250 (M. Claudius Marcellus
in exile).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EDUCATION 691

Rome and the magisterial entourage abroad were acquiring Greek
intellectuals with whom scholarly interests, if any, could be pursued.!4

The predominantly domestic and uninstitutionalized nature of
Roman education must have meant that the population at large enjoyed
only a very limited number of the opportunities open to the rich,
especially as girls were mostly taught at home. But to the general
parallelism of social class and educational opportunities there was one
important exception, at least in Rome: slaves and freedmen were not at
the bottom of the educational ladder. Greek-speaking captives, already
educated, did much of the teaching and trained other slaves at their
master’s house to increase their value. Some, manumitted for their
talents, opened schools. Education could be an instrument of social
mobility for such men and, occasionally, for the free poor, like Horace’s
teacher Orbilius, who had received some training in youth before being
left a destitute orphan, and then acquired fame if not fortune through
teaching.!° This was partly a measure of the contempt felt by Romans for
purely intellectual professions: as the Elder Seneca remarks of the first
Roman knight to teach rhetoric at Rome in the Augustan period, ‘Before
his time, the teaching of the most noble of subjects was restricted to
freedmen and, according to the distasteful custom that prevailed, it was
disgraceful to teach what it was honourable to learn.’!6 But the
importance of captives from Greek-speaking areas to Roman education
was also due to its content, which, in the second and first centuries,
became, at all levels, thoroughly Greek.

Children would often learn to speak Greek first at home from Greek
slaves, paedagogi, who could give elementary instruction and might
accompany the child to primary school. Grammatica had started with a
Latin version of Homer’s Odyssey made by a bilingual freedman, and
Greek poetry remained the principal ingredient, Latin works being
added as teachers edited them and applied Greek techniques of analysis
to them.!7 The teaching of rhetoric was conducted entirely in Greek until
the first decade of the first century, when Plotius Gallus tried to set up a
school of Latin rhetoric. Whereas, seventy years earlier, the Senate had
distrusted the Greek rhefores, now in 92 the censors, one of them the
accomplished orator L. Crassus, insisted on the superiority of instruc-
tion in Greek. Cicero was deterred from trying the new school on
educational grounds by ‘highly trained men’ (probably Crassus himself).
There have been attempts to find political motives, because Plotius was a
close friend of Marius, but there is no reason to disbelieve Cicero, who
would have been old enough to grasp the issues at the time. The new

4 See the list in Balsdon 1979 (a 5) 5 4ff.

15 E.g. Plut. Cat. Mas. 20.3; Plut. Crass. 2, 6; Nep. Att. 13.3; Suet. Gram. 9. Bonner 1977 (H 16)

37H, 58; Treggiari 1969 (G 247) 110ff; Forbes 1955 (H 39).
'6 Sen. Controv. 1, pref. 5; cf. Cic. Off. 1.151. '7 Suet. Gram. 1-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

692 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

school did not impart the traditional Greek technical instruction but
offered a short cut in practical exercises backed by a minimum of theory.
Cicero hints that it would thus have made rhetorical training more
accessible and perhaps given opportunities for success in public life to an
increased number: it is notable that in this period there was pressure
from the Italian upper classes for the franchise and the chance of political
participation. In this rather broad social sense the edict can be regarded
as political.!8

Crassus is represented in a Ciceronian dialogue set in 91 B.C. as hoping
that a proper Latin rhetorical training would eventually develop. His
older contemporary, the orator M. Antonius, had produced a volume
giving the fruits of his own experience, and by 80, Cicero had written a
systematic treatise De Inventione based on Greek rhetorical works.!9
Cicero’s dream, which he also ascribed to Crassus, was that a broad
education would result, in which not only Greek rhetorical theory, but
the study of history and philosophy as well, would be combined with
Roman experience. This remained an ideal still advanced by Quintilian
and Tacitus, but in fact, as all three writers make clear, rhetorical training
in both Latin and Greek became increasingly narrow and technical.
Cicero was going back to an ideal held by Isocrates and the sophists
before him, but the tradition had long lapsed in Greece itself. The
exercises which he himself practised in youth became the principal
ingredient. Cicero himself tried to impose on his son and nephew a more
theoretical training than their Greek rhetor espoused, but his zeal for
declaiming on abstract philosophical themes was not popular with them
or their contemporaries.”° It was not surprising. Cicero himself ascribes
the popularity of rhetorical training at Rome to its practical benefits,
namely reputation, wealth and influence. He also notes that specializa-
tion was well established in the Greek intellectual tradition by the time it
was imported into Rome.?!

II, SOCIAL SETTING

Like Roman education, Roman intellectual life was not served, until the
collapse of the Republic, by publicly supported institutions such as the
libraries of the Hellenistic kingdoms. As dictator, Caesar planned to
build the first public library in Rome, enlisting the eminent scholar M.
Terentius Varro, who had written a treatise De Bib/iothecis, as its first

18 Suet. Gram. 25-6; Cic. De Or. 111.93~4 where Crassus defends the edict; Tac. Dial. 35; Cic.
Arch, 20 (Marius); Bonner 1977 (# 16) 71ff.; Rawson 1985 (H 109) 49-50.

'9 Cic. De Or. 1.94; 206; 208; Brus. 163. Rawson 1978 (H 107) dates the first Roman efforts to
organize a work on formal Greek principles as an ars to the period of De Inventione.

20 Cic. Inv. Rhet. 1.1ff.; De Or. 1.22; 111.131; OFr. 111.3, 4.
2 De Or. 1.22; 11.13 1-6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SOCIAL SETTING 693

librarian. But the project may have been impeded by the burning in 47 of
the Alexandrian library from which some of the Greek books might have
come, and nothing seems to have been done by the time of Caesar’s death
three years later.?2

In the mean time, however, Roman commanders had been bringing
back Greek libraries from the East, looted or purchased with their
booty. Thus the library of king Perseus of Macedon was acquired by the
sons of Aemilius Paullus, and Lucullus’ library, rich in Greek books,
came from his Pontic spoils, while Pompey was to take the medical
treatises owned by Mithridates.?3

But the most romantic acquisition was made by Sulla when he seized
the library of Apellicon of Teos, who had become enmeshed with the
enemy cause in Athens. That collection included the library of Aristotle.
To those facts, related by the contemporary philosopher Posidonius,
Strabo and Plutarch add further details: the library, containing the books
of Aristotle and Theophrastus, had come by chance into the hands of
ignorant people who buried it in the ground to protect it from agents of
the king of Pergamum; the books were badly damaged and inexpertly
emended by Apellicon; until Sulla brought them to Rome and Tyrannio
worked on them, the Peripatetics had been without the technical works
of Aristotle and his successor; Tyrannio now supplied copies to
Andronicus of Rhodes, who published the books and compiled
indices.24 Though there is room for doubt whether the works in question
had really been unknown in Greece, and whether that was the reason for
the becalmed state of the Peripatetic School, there is every reason to
believe that the books made a great impact, and that an important role
was played by Tyrannio, with whom Strabo, one of our sources, had
studied. He is known from Cicero’s letters as an outstanding scholar and
teacher who helped to organize Cicero’s library at Antium.?5

The collections of Sulla and Lucullus now made it possible for Greek
scholars to do serious work at Rome — though, even earlier, Polybius had
first met Scipio, a son of Aemilius Paullus, when the historian came to
borrow some books from Perseus’ library. Lucullus’ library had colon-
nades and study-rooms where such Greeks in Rome congregated.
Tyrannio, already an accomplished grammarian when captured, had
been manumitted by Murena, an act which his commander Lucullus
regarded as showing the scholar inadequate respect, since it implied that

22 Suet. Iu/. 44.2. Asinius Pollio built a public library in 39 B.c. in his atrium libertatis (Pliny HN
vit.1ts; Ov. Tr. t1t.1.71-2) and Augustus followed suit (Suet. Aug. 29.3).

23 Plut. Aem. 28; Isid. Orig. vi.5.1; Plut. Lue. 42; Cic. Fin. 111.7; Pliny HN xxv.7.

24 Ath. v.214d (= Posidonius ed. Edelstein—Kidd 1988 (B 32) F253.145ff); Strab. x111.608-9C;
Plut. Sw//. 26.

25 Strab. x11.5 48C; Cic. Ass. 1v.ga.1. On the Peripatos and Andronicus of Rhodes, see e.g. Donini
1982 (H 33) 81ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

694 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

he had been a slave. He could clearly have returned to the East but
preferred to become rich and esteemed at Rome. Similarly the great
student of medicine, Asclepiades, refused to leave Rome for the court of
Mithridates despite the king’s medical library.26

In Cicero’s day, he and his friends were building up their own smaller
collections. With the book trade in an embryonic condition, there was
need of trained slave copyists not only to duplicate new works but to
supply existing gaps.2”? Some of the problems are vividly described by
Cicero, to whom his brother Quintus turned for help in expanding his
library. Latin books on sale were corrupt and unreliable; to acquire good
Greek ones required the advice of a trained person, and Tyrannio this
time was too busy.28 The situation clearly provided an incentive to
scholars to prepare authoritative texts. Cicero also mentions the possibi-
lity of exchanging books, swapping duplicates or borrowing to make
copies. Keeping such a library up to date was a perennial problem. For
his own use, he had to send to Athens for a work of Posidonius, despite
the excellent collection of Stoic texts in Lucullus’ library to which he had
access.29

How essential books were to the idea of civilized leisure in this period
is shown by Cicero’s remark that, when Tyrannio had arranged his
library, he felt his house had acquired a soul.39It was clearly necessary and
regular to call on friends and borrow from them, especially as men like
Cicero had their collections of books split up, with libraries in each villa
as well as in their town houses.3! The result was that intellectual life was
of necessity social in nature, as we see it in the Topica where Cicero and
Trebatius each pursue their own interests in Cicero’s library at Tuscu-
lum, or in De Finibus where Cicero comes upon Cato, at Lucullus’ villa
not far away, surrounded by Stoic tomes.*?

Cicero’s letters in fact confirm what his dialogues depict, that study,
being a leisure activity for the governing classes, was associated with the
country and with villas. In certain areas, such as Tusculum, Antium and
the Bay of Naples, such villas were thickly clustered. At Tusculum for
example we hear of villas owned by Cicero, Hortensius, Lucullus and
Varro, just as in the previous generation Q. Mucius Scaevola, L. Licinius
Crassus and M. Aemilius Scaurus had spent their holidays in close

26 Polyb. xxx1.23.4; Plut. Lue. 42; 19.7 (Tyrannio); Asclepiades: Pliny HN xxv.6; xxvi.12.

27 Cicero’s Hibrarii: Att, x11.14.13; Xlt.2ta.1; Atticus’: Aff, xii.13.1; XIL.21a.1; x11.4o.1; Nep.
Aft. 13.3. On others see Rawson 1985 (H 109) 43-4.

28 Cic. OFr. 11.4.5; 11.5,6.

29 Att, xvi.ii.4g; Fin. ut.7. 30 Aft. 1v.8.2.
' Cicero had libraries at Tusculum (Div. 11.8; Top. 1), Antium (Av#z. 11.6.1; 1v.4a, 1), and Astura
(x11.13.1)at least, and he was given by a grateful client one that had belonged to the grammarian Ser.
Clodius (Suet. Gram. 3; Aft. 1.20.7; 1.1.12). 2 Top. 1; Fin, 01.7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SOCIAL SETTING 695

proximity to each other.33 Whereas a rural setting is an exception in
Plato’s dialogues, it is the rule for Cicero.¥

Villa life was not, of course, simple rustic life. On the contrary, what
we see displayed in Cicero’s dialogues and letters is a highly sophisticated
life of social etiquette and manners. We hear of dining with Roman
friends or members of the local aristocracy, where shop-talk is banned in
favour of literary conversation or recitation.55 A certain formality
obtains. Compliments are sent and calls made; apologies are expected for
casual visits and formal invitations to stay are necessary;* politeness is
shown to their elders by the young;*” controversy is carried on with the
utmost courtesy and charm.%8

To some extent we are dealing with an ideal that the over-sensitive
Cicero could only try to realize. Unwelcome guests did just drop in on
him; the young Brutus and Calvus were sometimes tactless and harsh in
their criticisms, and Cicero, if provoked, could write in a similar vein.*°
But Cicero normally preferred urbanity* and in this Caesar sympathized
and agreed with him: they were effusive in praising each other’s works
on Cato, though one was eulogistic, the other vituperative.‘!

Social relations with Greek attendants or companions must have
varied according to their status and accomplishments, from the near
equality with Roman aristocrats enjoyed by Panaetius and Posidonius,
who held high office in Rhodes, to the semi-independent status of
Philodemus who may have been provided by L. Calpurnius Piso with
his own cottage in Herculaneum,’ right down to the humiliating
position of the Peripatetic Alexander who travelled everywhere with
Crassus, receiving a cloak for his journey and returning it when he came
home.*? Cicero regularly portrays Greeks like these as having a solemn
attitude to intellectual matters, verging on ‘neptiae (‘owlishness’), unlike

33. De Or. 11.60 (leisure); 11.10 (ras and ofiun); Fat. 28 (Hortensius); Acad. 11.148 (Lucullus); Fam.
1x.2.1 (Varro); De Or. 1.265 (Scaevola); 1.24 (Crassus); 1.214 (Scaurus). See now Linderski 1988 (Gc
145A).

34 The Phaedrus is exceptional in this respect, as is the Laws whose rural setting is specifically
mentioned as paralleled in that of De Legibus (1.15). Gell. NA. 1.2.1 owes more to Cicero than to
Plato.

35 Cic. De Or. 1.27 (bumanitas), cf. Aft. xitt.52.2, of the awkward visit of Caesar the dictator:
‘homines visi sumus’). Cicero gives rules for conversation in Of. 1.132. Recitation: Nep. Aft.
14.1. 3 De Or. 11.13-14; 11.27, cf. Aff. 1V,10.2; XIIL9.1.

37 De Or. 1.163; 11.3, see also Plut. Cie. 45; Ad Brut. 26.5 (Octavian rather exaggerated the role).

38 De Or. 1.262; Acad. 1.61; Off. 1.136-7; Fan. vit.18; XV.21.4.

39 Aft, x111.33a,1; Tac. Dial. 18.4; 26, see also Aft. vt.1.7; Fam. vit.27.

40 Fam. v.1 and 2 show how Cicero replied to the pompous Q. Metellus Celer.

4 Cic. Aff. x1t1.g0, 1; x111.46, 2; XtII.50, 1, and see Suet. Iu/. 73 for Caesar’s way with young
Calvus and Catullus. Varro could write a satire called Tricaranus (three-headed monster) in 59 (App.
BCiv. 11.9) and still be on close terms with Caesar and Pompey.

42 Strab. x1v.655C; Philodemus: Ath. Pal. xi.144 (see Gow—Page 1968 (B 43) no. 23 and Nisbet
ed, 1961 (B 77) App. 3 and 4; but cf. Rawson 1985 (1 109) 23. 4 Plut. Crass. 3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

696 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

the Roman gentlemen amateurs who know that intellectual subjects
must be broached only when the place, time and company are
appropriate.‘4

The social nature of intellectual activity is revealed again when we
consider the custom of dedication which had arisen in the Hellenistic
period. Dedications of works by Greek intellectuals to Romans are
attested from the second century on. They could be a mark of homage, a
sign of ambition or an expression of genuine and shared interests.*5
When Roman writers imitated the habit, they were often addressing
their social equals. Though the element of honour was present, as
Varro’s eagerness to receive a Ciceronian work makes clear, the choice of
dedicatee was often intellectually appropriate: Atticus received historical
works from Cornelius Nepos and Varro, while Cicero received works on
the Latin language from Caesar and from Varro, to whom in turn he
dedicated a work on Academic philosophy.*® Sometimes we can see that
a closer connexion is involved: Atticus was inspired by Cicero’s De
Republica to write his chronological summary, which in turn inspired
Cicero’s Brutus; Brutus dedicated his work On Virtue to Cicero, who says
that it spurred him on to write philosophy in Latin, as his own works
may have stimulated Varro.‘’ In Cicero’s letters we can see the import-
ance of Atticus as a catalyst, pressing Cicero to compose a work on
geography, encouraging him to write his eulogy of Cato, urging him to
make Varro a speaker in, and the recipient of, a work of philosophy. It
has been plausibly suggested that Atticus had the same sort of influence
on his friend Cornelius Nepos.*8

With Caesar’s dictatorship these social customs were threatened with
deformation. Whereas Cicero in 46 had seemed no more worried about
offending Caesar with his Cao than about displeasing Varro with the
Academica,” in 45, when he was dissuaded by Caesar’s ‘friends’ from
sending him a letter of advice, Cicero felt that he was now dealing witha
tyrant who expected flattery and, if disappointed, would retaliate in more
than words.5°

III. HELLENIZATION

What were the intellectual products of this society? One general
characteristic has emerged in what has already been said about educa-

“4 E.g. De Or, 1.103; 111; 11.18. 45 Ambaglio 1983 (H 2) 7ff.

46 Atticus was the dedicatee of Nepos’ De Excellentibus Ducibus and Varro’s De Vita Populi
Romani; Cicero of Caesar’s De Analogia and most of De Lingua Latina. Varro finally received, and was
made a speaker in, Cicero’s Academica.

47 Brut. 19; 11; 16 (with Douglas’ note 1966 (B 29) ad /oc. for the problems); Fin. 1.8; Acad. 1.3; 12.

48 Att. 11.6.1; 11.4.2; 1v.16.2; x1m.12. See Geiger 1985 (B 42) 98ff.

49 Caesar: Aff. xiI.q.2, though, in retrospect, Cicero says he was afraid of retaliation, A/¢t.
xut.28.3; Varro: Ads, X11.22.1; 24.2; 25.3.

50 Aff, XIL.§1.2; Xt1.2: ‘humanitatem omnem exuimus’, see n. 35 above; XIII.27.1; XIIT.28.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

HELLENIZATION 697

tion, travel, libraries and the presence of Greeks in Roman households:
in the first century B.c. the process of Hellenization intensified. To some
extent this can be connected with the progress of Roman imperialism,
for eastern wars, diplomatic activity and the acquisition of new pro-
vinces led to more Romans visiting Greek-speaking lands on official
business and to more captives and refugees coming to Rome. The battle
of Pydna resulted in the first great influx; the next came in the wake of the
Mithridatic Wars. In the First War during the 80s, Philo of Larissa, the
head of the Academy, came as a refugee from Athens, the Stoic
philosopher Posidonius and possibly the rhetorician Apollonius Molo
were sent as envoys from Rhodes, and Alexander Polyhistor entered
Rome as a war captive.>! In the First and Third Wars, Lucullus, first as
quaestor, then as commander, kept the poet Archias and the Academic
philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon in his entourage. When Lucullus
returned home in the Gos, Rome gained not only a library, a globe and
statues, including one by Sthenis, but the grammarian Tyrannio of
Amisus and the poet Parthenius of Nicaea, both captives who were to
make a considerable impact on Roman cultural life.52 When Pompey
returned after the final defeat of Mithridates, he was accompanied by the
historian and politician Theophanes of Mytilene.

These new contacts with Greek intellectuals, eager to ingratiate
themselves with the new masters of the world for the sake of their
communities and themselves, resulted in flattering accounts in Greek of
Roman achievements. Archias wrote up the campaigns of Lucullus in
verse; Theophanes, perhaps also Posidonius, did the same for Pompey in
prose.>3 But we must not exaggerate their influence on Roman policy
nor even their contribution to the Hellenization of Rome, which had
now acquired its own momentum through the effects of Greek education
and the presence of Greeks in the household.

In its showy, even frivolous, aspects, Greek culture could be an
instrument of aristocratic competition. Those in public life particularly
could attract popular interest by displaying Greek painting and sculp-
ture, erecting great public buildings in the Greek manner and staging
performances and competitions of a Greek type. Yet to speak of
pretension and exhibitionism is not enough to explain the zeal of the
Roman upper class to acquire Greek culture, especially in its less visual

51 Cic. Brat. 306; Plut. Mar. 45.4; Cic. Brut. 305.

82 Cic. Arch. 11; Antiochus: Acad. 11.4; 11; 61; Plut. Lac. 42, 3-4; globe: Strab. x11. 546c; statues:
ibid; Plut. Lae. 23.4; library and Tyrannio: n. 26; Suda s.v. Parthenius.

53 Archias: Cic. Arch. 21; Aff. 1.16.15; Theophanes: Arch.24; Plut. Pomp. 42. Theophanes’
influence on Pompey is probably exaggerated by Strabo x111.617-18c: see Crawford 1978 (1 29)
203-4; cf. Anderson 1963 (1 3) 35-41. Posidonius: for the problematic evidence of Strab. x1.492C,
sce Malitz 1983 (B 69) 70-4.

54 Gruen 1984 (A 43) I e.g. 271; Ferrary 1988 (a 30) 223 ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

698 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

and public aspects.55 What, after all, gave those things their prestige, if
not some genuine appreciation of their value? And that appreciation
must have been powerful enough to overcome the negative attitudes
that continued, albeit in a more subtle form than they had taken in the
generation of the Elder Cato. Greek culture was now definitely the
culture of a conquered people, and many thought it shameful to learn
from foreigners the arts that, they suspected, had contributed to Greek
defeat.5¢ Hence to be too Hellenized could bring ridicule, as T. Albucius
learned to his cost. He studied in Athens in youth and became a convert
to Epicureanism and to Greek language and culture generally, to such an
extent that Q. Mucius Scaevola, the augur, when he visited Athens on his
way out to govern Asia in about 119 B.c., had his entire retinue, lictors
and all, salute Albucius ironically in Greek — although Scaevola himself
had studied with the Greek philosopher Panaetius, while the poet
Lucilius, who immortalized the incident in satiric verse, shows in other
verses a comfortable familiarity with Greek literature and learning.*7 It
did not pay to seem too serious about such matters, and indeed various
types of concealment were practised. Of the two leading orators in the
early first century, Cicero tells us that M. Antonius pretended to be
ignorant of Greek learning, whereas L. Licinius Crassus pretended to
despise it in comparison with Roman achievements. Cicero still
employed both techniques.°8

The fact that Roman education in the late Republic was based on
Greek language and literature still leaves room for doubt as to how well
even the most literate could speak Greek or understand difficult literary
texts, for the accomplishments of leading Romans in those respects were
laced with pretence in both directions. In formal diplomacy, then as
now, Officials preferred to use their own language to avoid misunder-
standing and uphold national pride.5° On the other hand, there may be an
element of Greek wishful thinking, if not flattery, in Plutarch’s remarks
on the prowess of his Roman heroes in his own language. But there is
no reason to doubt that Apollonius was impressed by Cicero’s ability to
declaim in Greek, and Cicero and Atticus were not the only ones to
compose works of literature in the language.

55 A distinction Cicero hints at in Ba/b. 14-15.

56 Cicero’s grandfather maintained that the more Greek a Roman knew the more wicked he was
(De Or. 11.26). Cael. 40 for the idea that the Greeks wrote about virtues they could not attain; OFr.
1.1.16 for the contemptible character of contemporary Greeks attributed to long servitude.

57 Cic. Fin. 1.8-9; Brut, 131; De Or. 1.75 (Scaevola and Panaetius). On Lucilius’ culture, see
Gratwick 1982 (H 52) 167ff.

58 De Or. 11.4, cf. 1 Verr. 4.5 (display of ignorance); Mur. 63; Arch.2 (patronizing apologies for
discussion of these matters).

59 See Horsfall 1979 (H 61) 79ff. Diplomacy: Val. Max. 1.2.2, Aemilius Paullus spoke Latin and
used Roman interpreters on these occasions (Livy xLv.29.3), though he could address Perseus in
Greek (Polyb, xx1x.20; Livy xv.8.5).

6 E.g. Luc. 1.2; Brut. 2.3; Flam. 5.6 (the Greek of his extant letter is flawed: RDGE 199); Cie. 4.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

HELLENIZATION 699

If Fabius Pictor and his second-century successors wrote history in
Greek because there was then no tradition of Latin historiography to
follow, later writers composed in the language either to show off their
skill or when they wished to reach all or part of the large readership,
comprising the whole Mediterranean basin, for which Greek was the
lingua franca. Thus Rutilius Rufus, when living in Asia Minor, wrote a
history in Greek down to his own time, and Lucullus composed a history
of the Marsic War in Greek (into which he claimed to have introduced
barbarisms deliberately to prove the author’s nationality).6! Cicero and
Atticus both wrote accounts of Cicero’s consulship with which Cicero
hoped to impress the cities of Greece. Ultimately, however, history in
Greek was to be left to Greeks; it was philosophy that Romans were
ultimately to expound in Greek, despite the efforts of Brutus, Cicero and
Seneca to forge a technical philosophical vocabulary in Latin.

Writing in Greek, however, was not the solution for any but the most
recherché subjects. It would clearly not do for drama and oratory, which
were meant for the public at large, and it would not serve the potentially
large middle-brow readership for other kinds of literature, people who
had neither sufficient education nor travelling experience to read Greek
fluently and hence regularly. That was the audience for whom Cornelius
Nepos was to write and whom even Cicero claimed to have reached with
his works on philosophy and rhetoric.%

The original solution had been translation, or rather, by our
standards, adaptation. Livius Andronicus had made Homer accessible in
this way, and practical works on agriculture and medicine were even
later to be produced in Latin versions.® But a Roman public wanted
Roman subject matter. Even the early dramatists had not merely put
their Greek models into Latin: they had introduced Roman customs and
ideas, though they avoided causing offence by presenting the often
frivolous and immoral conduct in a Greek setting. Cicero sometimes
spoke of them as translators, but he knew that they preserved the effect,
not the words, of the Greek originals, so that even those who could read
the Greek enjoyed the Latin versions as well. Roman pride was also

6' Cic. Arch. 23; Ath. 1v.168; Plut, Lac. 1.2; Cie. Aft, 1.19.10: Lucullus was thinking of the
conventional apology used by Romans writing in Greek, which Cato had ridiculed in the case of the
historian Postumius Albinus (Polyb. xxx1x.1.1-2 with Walbank’s commentary ad /oc.).

62 Cie. Aff. 11.1.1-2; Nep. Aft. 18.6, see below, pp. 712-13.

6 On Brutus, see below, p. 719. A work [epi xa8yxovros by him is mentioned by Seneca, Ep.
95.45 but Priscian 199.8-9 cites in Latin from a work De Offtciis.

64 Nep. pref. 2; Pelop. 1; Cic. Off. 1.1 where he claims to have fulfilled the hopes expressed in Acad.
1.10; Fin. t.10. On this public see Horsfall 1979 (H 61); Geiger 1985 (B 42) 70-1.

65 Agriculture: a translation of Mayo’s Punic treatise was commissioned by the Senate after the
destruction of Carthage in 146 B.c. (Pliny HN xvuii.3.22-3; Columella Ras. 1.1.13). Varro preferred
to use (Rust. 1.1.10) the Greek translation dedicated to a ‘Sextilius praetor’, perhaps the man attested
in Africa in 88 B.c. (MRR 11.41,43). Medicine: Pompey had Pompeius Lenaeus translate medical
books from Mithridates’ library (Pliny HN xxv.7).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

700 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

involved: it may have been Varro who christened Ennius the Roman
Homer; Quintilian’s comparison of Greek and Latin authors, genre by
genre, is a later product of this desire, not only to emulate Greek culture,
but to equal, if not surpass it. Cicero knew his compatriots had a long
way to go before the Roman people ceased to depend on Greek writers.
He himself admits that when he set up Antonius and Crassus as ideals in
De Oratore and praised Roman oratory in the Brutus, he was really trying
to encourage Latin speakers, and that although it was better not to use a
foreign model, Demosthenes still came closest to the ideal. And it was
Demosthenes whom Cicero really set out to rival.6

The Romans were educated by the Greeks and their literature. They
learned to increase the resources of Latin, to employ sophisticated prose
rhythms and poetic metres, and to organize both their thoughts and their
literary compositions. They learned to render Greek ideas precisely in
both languages and they entered into intellectual controversies current
in the Greek world. How great the debt was will emerge when we come
to consider the various types of intellectual activity. It is also important
to remember how great was the effort involved. As Cicero’s Crassus says
in explaining his attitude to the new Latini rhetores, “The importation of
the ancient and pre-eminent wisdom of the Greeks as part of our national
habits and practices requires men of advanced learning, of whom so far
we have had none in this sphere.’68

Direct importation, that is, translation from the Greek, was
employed, not only as an end in itself, but as a form of training: it
stretched the resources of Latin. Cicero did a lot of such work in youth,
as did his brother Quintus, Julius Caesar, and, earlier, Julius Caesar
Strabo.® Even later in life Cicero translated verses for citation in his
philosophical works, and many other Latin works contained passages of
translation.”” The difficulty and novelty of the Roman achievement in
this area should not be underestimated. As the Greeks rarely translated
works from other languages for their own use, there were no treatises on
the subject to guide Roman writers. The Greeks themselves, as Cicero
points out, coined new words to cover new concepts, and philosophers
struggled to create a technical language, but Latin translators had to
grasp the difference in character of two languages and preserve the
genius of their own while developing its full potential.”!

66 Cic. Fin. 1.4 on verbatim translations: but Acad. 1.10 ptobably represents what Cicero really
thought. On the nature of these Latin adaptations of Athenian drama, see Jocelyn 1967 (B 48) 23-8.

67 Brut. 138ff.; Orat. 22-33 132-3. 68 Cic. De Or. 111.95.

69 De Or. 1.155, and see Brut. 310; Quint. x. 5,2. D.M. Jones 1959 (H 67); Horsfall 1979 (H 61)
83-4.

7 Cic. Tuse. 11.26 (verse); Fin 1.7 (passages in philosophical works): cf. Livy’s use of Polybius.

71 See above, n. 65 on translation by Cassius Dionysius of Mago; Cic. Fin. 111.3-4; Acad. 1.24-5,
cf. Sedley 1973 (B 107) 21ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE Jol

IV. SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE

Increased exposure to Greek culture and contact with Greek intellec-
tuals helped to erode upper-class inhibitions about studying and writing
on subjects not directly connected with Roman public life or traditional
practical training. In those areas most closely related to formal educa-
tion, scholarship and science, the outstanding figure is Marcus Terentius
Varro, who was regarded, at the time and later, as the most learned
Roman of his age.”2 An older contemporary of Cicero, whom he
resembled in social background and political sympathies, Varro too had
an active political career, but was able to settle down calmly after
Caesar’s victory to a life of retirement, producing in the next twenty
years voluminous works on the Latin language and its literature, on
Roman antiquities, and on philosophy. Invited by Caesar to run the first
public library, he was eventually the only living man to be honoured
with a bust in the library of Pollio.73 His uneasy relationship with Cicero
probably sprang from their different priorities: Varro attached less
importance to politics and to stylistic polish.”4 As a result, many more
works of Cicero remain for us. Yet Varro’s books had great influence on
the learned poetry and romantic history of the Augustan age and then on
later antiquarians and the Church Fathers. It was appropriate that Cicero
did not outlive the Republic: Varro survived, perhaps until 27 B.c., and
his vision of Rome was adopted by Augustus as the spirit of the new
regime.

The two extant works of Varro show some of his leading characteris-
tics, though the more accessible, De Re Rustica, published in 37 B.c. when
he was in his eightieth year, is probably not typical of his weightier
works in its use of dialogue form to enliven a technical discussion of
agriculture, Aside from the heavy-handed humour with which Varro
first chooses speakers with agricultural names and then carefully
underlines the fact, the most typical feature is his concern with
organizing the subject-matter along the lines of an ars or réxvy in the
Greek fashion. There is an emphasis on definition, on classification of
topics into orderly subdivisions and on the two functions of profit and
pleasure.’> Despite Varro’s claim to be providing his wife and country-
men with a reference work on practical farming, the material is neither
detailed nor technical enough for the working farmer, or indeed for the
capital investors like himself who composed his audience, though the

72 Cic. Acad. 1, fr. 36 Reid = Aug. De civ. D. v1.2; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 11.21.2; Quint. x.1.95;
Apul. Apo/. 42; Dahlmann 1935 (B 22) and 1973 (B 23).

3 Pliny HN vinitys. ™ Kumaniecki 1962 (H 72).
7 Rust. 1.2.9; 11.4.1; the work is dedicated to his wife, probably because she was called Fundania.
L.1,11; 1,374.1; 15,1, see also Cassiod. ap. Keil Grammatici Latini vu (1880), 213. On the names and

on the fiterary qualities of the work, Linderski 1988 (G 145A) Ut2ff.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

7o2 18, INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

information, as far as it goes, seems to be reliable. Instead this is more of a
theoretical work, where analysis is often pursued for its own sake, as
elsewhere in Varro. Here, albeit with a touch of self-parody, 81
subdivisions of the subject of pasturage are listed as a minimum; in De
Philosophia 288 possible philosophical sects are distinguished.” Division
into four is particularly favoured, a scheme that Varro felt to be natural
and rooted in the cosmos, but which he took over from the Greeks and
traced back to the Pythagorean analysis of things into antithetic pairs.””

Equally typical of Varro’s other works is the emphasis on citing
authorities, here particularly inappropriate in a supposedly improvised
discussion, and a certain carelessness both in matters of literary presen-
tation and in the adaptation to context of his source-material. The
carelessness is not surprising in view of the haste with which Varro
composed: he claimed to have written 490 volumes by the age of
seventy-seven and went on writing, working on several things simulta-
neously, until the day of his death.’ But it is also a result of the methods
of compilation used by ancient scholars: as the papyrus roll makes
finding references difficult, excerpting was crucial and verification of
words and context avoided.”

It is natural for us to regret most the loss of works in which Varro
could use his own experience, just as we find what he says about his own
estates and about contemporary methods the most valuable parts of De
Re Rastica. Varro wrote two works for the instruction of his friend
Pompey, one on senatorial procedure, when Pompey entered the Senate
in 70 B.C. as consul without having held any of the lower offices, and one
on naval matters: Varro served as Pompey’s legate both in Spain in the
jos and in 67 in the campaigns against the pirates for which he was
awarded the naval crown.® Yet what made him a final authority for later
generations was his application of Greek systematic methods to every
type of subject-matter, and particularly to past and present Roman life.

In the De Re Rustica, Varro was talking about Italian agriculture in
particular. Book 1 includes a eulogy of Italy; in Book 11 Varro celebrates
the old rural way of life and castigates Greek refinements in Roman villas
(and the Greek names for them) as a sign that the salubrious habits of the

% Rust. 11.1.12; 25-8; Aug. De civ. D. xtx.1-3: fragments of De Philosophia have been edited by
Langenberg (1959 (B 62)). See however Spurr 1986 (G 230) x—xiii for the argument that Varro’s
schematization is not incompatible with practical realism.

7 Rust. 1.5.3; Ling. v.12; 1X.31; v.11 (Pythagoras). The division was basic to both Antiquitates
(below, p. 706), according to Augustine, De civ. D. v1.3 = Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum 1 ft.4
(Cardauns); elsewhere in Varro (Gell. NA xtv.7} ximi.411.3).

78 Gell. NA 11.10.17; Val. Max, vit.3.

19 Skydsgaard 1968 (B 113) ch. 7.

8 Procedure: Gell. NA xtv.7.2: Pompey needed to know ‘quid facere dicereque deberet cum
senatum consuleret’; Ephemeris navalis: Dahlmann 1935 (B 22) 125 2-3; service with Pompey: Rust. 11,
pref.6; Pliny HN vut.115; xvt.7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE 793

past are being abandoned. Though he follows Dicaearchus’ Life of Greece
in describing the successive, then coexisting, stages of gathering,
pasturage and agriculture, and ascribes dignity to pasturage, which
merits a whole book, he none the less berates his countrymen for
returning farm land to pastoral use. He is thinking not only of Rome’s
increased dependence on grain imports, but of the decline of traditional
Roman virtues. The Roman dilemma could not be made clearer: if the
Greeks provided the intellectual framework for understanding the
historical development and current practice of Italian farming, they also
provided the refinements that were destroying traditional Italian life.®!

One curious feature of De Re Rustica is the persistent use of etymology
as an explanatory instrument. In the context of agriculture, this is mere
embellishment, but it was a more fundamental tool for Varro’s anti-
quarian scholarship. In fact the study of the Latin language, to which his
other extant work is devoted, was a life-long passion. In addition to the
twenty-five books of De Lingua Latina, of which six survive in poor
condition, Varro is known to have written at least nine works on the
subject over a period of fifty years.82 He was interested not only in the
literary language but in that of common speech, both for its own sake
and because it was the key to cultural, religious and social history.®3

In De Lingua Latina, written in the 4os,*4 Varro, after an introductory
volume, deals at length with three subjects: how words were imposed on.
things (etymology); how different forms of words arise (derivation and
inflection), and how words are combined logically to make sentences
(syntax) (viit.1). The books that survive are the last three of the six on
etymology, which deal with its practical application, and the first three of
the six on derivation and inflection, which concern theory. The division
of treatment into theory and application was applied to all three subjects.

Given the loss of the opening books it is difficult to recover what
theory Varro adopted to explain the origin of language, perhaps his
mysterious ‘fourth level’ of the science of etymology (v.7—-9). There are,
however, some hints that he favoured a ‘natural’ theory of language
(v1.3), adopting a Stoic idea according to which the one thousand or so
elemental words (primigenia) reflected the nature of the things they
denoted (v1.37); he perhaps acknowledged also the fashionable Pytha-
goreanism of his day in the notion of an original imposition of words by
wise men (vIII.7).

This issue went back to the vdéuos/pvais (convention vs. nature)

Rast. 1.2.3-8; 11, pref, 2-4; 11.1.3-6.

82 An early work De Antiquitate Litterarum is dedicated to L. Accius who died ¢. 84 B.C.; the
Diseiplinae, written in 34-33 B.c., contained a book on grammatica (Pliny HN xxtx.65,9).

83 Ling. v.8—-9.

84 Cicero had been promised the dedication of the work in 47 (Att. x111.12.3) for which he was still
waiting in the summer of 45 (Fam. 1x.8).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

704 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

controversy of the fifth century B.c. Plato in the Cratylus discusses
whether words denote objects, actions and qualities according to
convention or nature, and the question had never ceased to stimulate
debate. Varro’s contemporary, the poet Lucretius, presents, in an
imaginative reconstruction of primitive human life, the view of Epicu-
rus on the origins of language, whereby each group of men named things
as a natural and instinctive reaction to its particular environment. He
omits, however, Epicurus’ later refinement which granted a role to
convention in rationalizing language at a later stage. Another contem-
porary, Nigidius Figulus, seems to have had views based, like Varro’s,
on Stoicism with a possible dash of Pythagoreanism.®5

In Books vii-x Varro enters into the complexities of a Hellenistic
controversy over the morphology of language, which he discusses and
illustrates as it applies to Latin. According to him the followers of the
Pergamene grammarians led by Crates of Mallos defended, under Stoic
influence, linguistic irregularity (‘anomaly’) as justified by common
usage reflecting the natural growth of language. The adherents of the
Alexandrian school believed that language in common use should be
corrected in the direction of regularity, and that words should be derived
and inflected in strict observance of the principle of ‘analogy’. The
controversy was still generating great excitement in this period. Not
only freedmen grammarians like Caesar’s teacher Antonius Gnipho and
Staberius Eros were concerned with it, but Caesar himself, while
travelling over the Alps in 54 B.c., wrote a defence of the analogist
position held by his old instructor. Cicero too alludes to the controversy
in works written about the same time as De Lingua Latina.®6

Varro points out the value of some arguments on both sides of the
anomalist~analogy dispute.8? He concludes that there is a natural regular-
ity or analogy which is exhibited in the inflected forms of a language
(vitt.23). This should be followed by speakers of the language as a body
and by individuals except where common custom has established an
aberrant form (x.74), though poets can influence usage in the direction of
analogy (1x.17). In deriving words from other words, however, indivi-
duals can follow their own wishes (x.53), though even those derived
forms are subject to some ‘natural’ (in Varro’s sense) restrictions (IX.37).
Varro claims to be setting out the first principles governing the
derivation and inflection of words as no one before him had done (x.1),

8 See Sedley 1973 (8 107) for Epicurus’ final and refined view, represented by D.L. x.75 (cf. Lucr.
v. 1041ff), and for the philosopher’s earlier change from a purely conventionalist to a primarily
naturalist position. On Nigidius Figulus see pp. 708-710 and n. 110.

86 Gnipho: Suet. Gramm. 7 mentions a work De Latino Sermone and a tradition that he studied in
Alexandria: Quint. 1.6.23 illustrates his analogist views; Staberius Eros: Priscian 385.1, see also
Quint. 1.6.3, Caesar: Suet. Iu/. 56.5; Cicero: Or. 15 5ff.; Brut. 258-9.

87 Ling. X.1; 1X.1-3; 113-14; Taylor 1975 (H 123).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE 705

that is, he sees his own contribution to the subject as systematization, not
invention.

In writing on Latin literature and Latin poets, Varro was principally
following his teacher L. Aelius Stilo who, at the turn of the first century
B.c., had been the first to lift ‘grammatical’ studies above the practical
needs of teaching. Cicero, who had heard him lecture, commends Aelius
for his grasp of Greek and Latin literature, of older Roman writers and of
Roman antiquities. Varro appealed to Aelius’ authority in stating that if
the Muses wanted to speak Latin they would speak like Plautus, but he
was prepared to correct his master’s mistakes in etymology. In establish-
ing the canon of authentic Plautine plays, Varro disagreed with his other
main predecessor Accius, and, though not concerned with textual
criticism in our sense, suggested that certain other plays might be
genuine ‘because of the texture and the humour displayed’ .88

The triumph of Varronian systematization was the Disciplinae in
which, out of the Greek tradition of a general education, the éyxdx«Atos
mratdeia, he created a specifically Roman product, the encyclopaedia or
summary of basic knowledge. Following the Greeks, the Romans of the
first century B.c. had come to view grammatica, rhetoric and dialectic,
arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music as studies befitting a free
citizen (artes liberales), which could also prepare him for the study of
philosophy. Now Varro offered a canon of nine subjects, by adding to
these seven liberal arts the practical ones of medicine and architecture.
The mediaeval trivium, consisting of the three preparatory subjects,
grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, and the quadrivium, consisting of the
mathematical subjects, were therefore the legacy of Varro as modified by
St Augustine, who rejected the two practical subjects.89 Of those,
medicine, theoretical and practical, returned to the hands of the Greeks,
but architecture, to judge by the one Latin treatise to survive, retained
the clear stamp of Varro. Vitruvius, a practical architect appointed by
Augustus to look after the repair of military machines, wrote, as an old
man, ten books De Architectura in which he insists on the importance for
architects of a training in the liberal arts, gives a long list of authorities
(mainly Greek but including Varro), and criticizes some earlier writers
for their unsystematic presentation: he himself promises to compose an
ars covering the entire subject, with different subjects handled in
different books.%

Varro’s contribution to science was that of a compiler. It is appropri-
ate to invoke the dictum of Cicero that the Romans, unlike the Greeks,

ve Cic. Brut. 205; Quint. x.1.99; Gell. N.A 1.18.1; 3; 111.3; above n. 82. See Winterbottom 1982 (H
I .

a Hadot 1984 (4 57) doubts Varro’s later influence and the existence of this canon of seven

subjects before Porphyry in the third century a.p., but see the review by Rawson 1987 (H 110).
© Pliny HN xxtx.17; Vitr. vit, pref.10; pref.4; Iv, pref.t.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

706 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

had never held geometry or mathematics in high esteem but were only
interested in their practical applications, surveying and calculation. Yet
it is also important to note that Greek science itself had lost much of its
creative impetus in the latter part of the second and the first century B.C.
The Greeks themselves were largely concerned with the production of
handbooks based on earlier discoveries and often written by literary
polymaths rather than working scientists. Even the third-century B.c.
poem of Aratus on astronomy, which was translated by Cicero and
enjoyed such a vogue among Latin poets, had been written ‘without any
knowledge of astronomy but with a certain poetic talent’.®!

It was in his antiquarian works that Varro most fully displayed the
application of Greek techniques to the loving investigation of Roman
institutions and traditions. The two most important were the monumen-
tal Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum and Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, of
which the second and later was dedicated to Caesar as pontifex maximus,
possibly at the time when he was also dictator. The order of composition
reflects the fact that Varro dealt with Roman religion as a human
creation, which he felt should be preserved (whether or not it conformed
to philosophical truth). To that end he provided practical information
on the particular powers of particular gods. Of the benefit those works
conferred on Rome, Cicero wrote in 45:

When we were wandering and straying like visitors in our own city, your books
brought us home and enabled us to realize at last who and where we were. You
have revealed the age of our fatherland, its systems of chronology, its rules
governing religious rites and priests, its civil and military institutions, the
location of its districts and sites, and the names, the types, the functions and the
causes of everything divine and human.%

These words also direct us to self-identification as the common theme
that underlies the various Roman responses, positive and negative, to
Greek culture in this period. From the Greeks the Romans acquired both
the analytic tools and the basis of comparison necessary to understand
themselves.

This function of Varro’s works is made explicit in a curious work
called Hebdomades, the first illustrated Roman book.” In fifteen volumes,

1 See Stahl 1962 (H 119) chs. 3-5; Cicero on mathematics: Tuse. 1.5, cf. Aft. 11.4.1 for Cicero’s
own troubles in understanding mathematical geography; Cicero on Aratus: Nat. D. u.104ff
(Cicero’s translation); Rep. 1.22 ‘non astrologiae scientia, sed poetica quadam facultate’.

92 On the date of the later work, see Cardauns 1976 (B 11) 11, 132~3 and 1978 (B 12) 80ff; Jocelyn
1982-3 (H 65) 148ff. Grafton and Swerdlow 1985 (H 51) 460, n. 26 suggest that the earlier work may
have described the Julian calendar reform, which perhaps strengthens the case for a date during the
dictatorship. Varro’s rationale: Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum 1 fr.5 (Cardauns) = Aug., De civ. D.
vig; 1 fr. 12 = De civ. D. v.31; 1 ft.3 = De civ. D. 1v.22; Beard in ch. 19 below, pp. 758-9.

93 Acad. 1.9.

4 Pliny HN xxxv.11; Symmachus, Epp. 1.2.2; t.4.1,2; Auson. Mos. 305-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PYTHAGOREANISM 707

published in 39 B.c., he provided portraits and accompanying epigrams
for 700 Greeks and Romans in different categories of achievement:
intellectual, political and religious. In this alignment of Greeks and
Romans lay the inspiration for the parallel books De Viris I/lustribus of
Cornelius Nepos and for Plutarch’s Lives. In writing about foreign and
Roman generals, Nepos states explicitly that the purpose of the double
series is to enable readers to judge which generals were superior, though
his preface reveals also a less partisan purpose, of making men aware that
conduct must be judged by the standards of the society in question.

V. PYTHAGOREANISM

In the first book of the Hebdomades, Varro spoke of the importance of the
number seven in the organization of the heavenly bodies, in the birth and
growth of human beings and in historical tradition, adding that he
himself had entered the twelfth hebdomad of his age and written seventy
hebdomads of books. This concern with the link between nature and
number, shown here and elsewhere by Varro, is clearly connected with
the revival of interest in Pythagoras whose studies in astronomy and
acoustics had led to the development of a superstitious numerology.
Varro, in fact, is said to have been buried in the ‘Pythagorean way’ in
leaves of myrtle, olive and black poplar.”

Cicero affords a glimpse of the attention paid to Pythagoras in his day.
He insists that the Pythagorean communities of southern Italy in the
sixth to fourth centuries must have had an influence on institutions of the
early Roman state, and, indeed, Pliny the Elder tells us that there was a
statue of the sage in the Roman comitium in the fourth century.% In 181
B.c. an archaeological find revealed the ‘Books of Numa’, the Greek
volumes which were identified in the earliest historical accounts, less
than fifty years later, as Pythagorean philosophy. The identification was
based on the tradition that Numa was a pupil of Pythagoras: Cicero and
his sophisticated friends, Atticus, Varro and Nepos, rightly rejected it on
chronological grounds.®But Cicero still emphasized the earliness of
Pythagorean influence: he liked the idea that Roman interest in Greek
philosophy went back to an early period and an Italian source.!0

9 Hann. 13.4; pref. 3. Though Varro was probably already at work on Hebdomades in 44 (Cic. Att.
xvi.r1.3 with Shackleton Bailey 1965—70 (B 108) ad Joc.) and some of the later Nepos lives can be
dated between 35 and 32 B.c., Varro’s priority is regarded as uncertain by Geiger 1985 (B 42) 81.

9% Gell, NA tt.1o.1. 7 Pliny HN xxxv.160.

98 Cic. Tuse. 1v.2ff; Pliny HN xxxiv.26. Some confirmatory evidence for Cicero’s claim is
adduced by Jocelyn 1976-7 (H 64).

® Livy xt.29.3~-14; Pliny HN x1u.8qff; Polyb. vi.j9.2 whom Cicero and his friends were
probably following (cf. Rep. 1.27).

100 De Or. 11.154; Rep. 11.28, cf. Tuse. 1v.5: philosophical interest of long standing in Rome.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

708 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

This Pythagorean revival was not, however, a specifically Roman
development. Here as in other areas, Roman intellectuals were partici-
pating in a more general movement. For example, Cicero’s notion,
shared by Varro, that the dogmatic teachings of Plato were traceable to
his contacts with Pythagoreans in the West reminds us that Posidonius
had traced to Pythagoras Plato’s theories on the soul and the passions. At
this period also Alexander Polyhistor wrote a book on Pythagorean
precepts and included the Pythagoreans in his History of the Philosophical
Schools.!0' Moreover, various texts, some composed in the Doric dialect
of Italy and Sicily, purporting to emanate from ancient Pythagorean
writers, are now thought to have been composed in the second and first
centuries B.c., probably by the middle of the first century.!02

With this thirst for Pythagorean doctrine went a fascination with
Plato’s Timaeus, for which Posidonius had provided an exegesis and
which was to become a key dialogue for the Middle Platonists. Cicero
translated part of the work, and his introduction, written in 45, survives.
In it he pays tribute to the recently deceased Nigidius Figulus, the
scholar whom a later antiquarian was to set beside Varro, regarding
them as the two pillars of learning in the age of Cicero and Caesar.'9
Cicero says of him that he was born to revive the disciplina of the
Pythagoreans and was a man versed in all the liberal arts, but particularly
concerned with the ‘secrets of nature’, by which Cicero means science or
natural philosophy.' Cicero’s description of Nigidius, a senatorial ally
in the Catilinarian conspiracy and later a fellow-supporter of Pompey in
the civil war, fits well with his attested works on the gods, on the nature
of man, on animals and on the wind, especially as Pythagoras was
associated with natural science in this period. But by writers under the
Empire Nigidius is sometimes depicted as an astrologer and prophet, !%5
and he is known to have written on astrology, dreams and divination. It
is possible that Nigidius, though writing as a scholar, expressed belief in
at least some of these methods of predicting the future which gave him
the reputation of an occultist, just as the practice of necromancy is
alleged of Appius Claudius who, dedicating a work to his fellow-augur
Cicero, expressed some belief in divination. These interests of prominent
contemporaries remind us that Cicero’s attack on all forms of divination
as superstition may not be pure rhetoric, and that the robust rationalism

101 Cic, Rep. 1.15—16; Fin. v.87; Varro in Aug. De civ. D. vitt.3: Posidonius, Edelstein—Kidd 1988
(B 32) T95, cf. Cic. Tuse. 1v.10; 1.39; Alexander, FGrH no. 273, frs. 94,93. See Burkert 1965 (H 22);
Rawson 1985 (H 109) 291-3 for possible Roman influence on Greek interests in this area.

102 Thesleff 1961 (H 125); essays by Burkert 1971 (H 23) and Thesleff 1971 (H 127); Dillon 1977 (H
31) 117ff. 103, Edelstein—Kidd 1988 (B 32); Gell. NA xtx.14.1.

104 Tim.1, and see Acad. 1.15319 for natural science as unveiling mysteries.

105 Cicero: De Or. 1.42, cf. Rep. 1.16; Tuse. v.10; later writers: Suet. Aung. 94.5, cf. Lucan 1.639.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

PYTHAGOREANISM 709

be expounds in De Divinatione was pitched against something more
widespread than theoretical Stoicism.'!%

Whether or not such interests were connected with Pythagoreanism is
disputed. Cicero, attacking Caesar’s associate Vatinius, says that he
claimed to be a Pythagorean and justified his barbaric customs by using
the name of a most learned man, and the latter is reasonably identified as
Nigidius by a later scholiast, who adds that enemies spoke of a shady
cabal (factio), though its members claimed to be followers of Pythago-
ras.!07 Cicero drops hints about Vatinius’ interest in haruspicy, while
elsewhere he regards Pythagoras as a leading authority on divination and
dreams.!8 Finally, in his thirty-volume grammatical work, Nigidius
exhibited an interest in etymology and stated firmly that names were
imposed on things by nature, not convention. The particular example
preserved resembles an argument ascribed to the Stoic Chrysippus, but
the view is also consonant with the idea attributed to Pythagoras by
Cicero that, as in Plato’s Cratylus, a primordial sage named things
correctly to represent their nature. !0

In view of the interest in Pythagoras in Rome and elsewhere that we
have mentioned, it is hard to see what Cicero means when he says that, in
his view, Nigidius renewed Pythagorean teaching, even if we allow for
the exaggeration of a compliment. It has been suggested that Nigidius
actually founded a society of some kind or that he initiated the move,
taken up by Eudorus of Alexandria, to turn Pythagoreanism into a
serious philosophy again.'!0 In any case this Neo-Pythagoreanism,
though espoused by charismatic individuals, did not become a separate
philosophical sect comparable to the four major schools, for which
Marcus Aurelius was to establish professorial chairs. In the first century
A.D. in Rome it contributed elements, such as vegetarianism and the
nightly examination of conscience, to the (roughly Stoic) doctrine of the
‘Sextii’;'!1 otherwise it became an important ingredient in the new

106 Appius: Cic. Leg. 11.32; Tuse. 1.37; Div. 1.132. Cicero’s attack: Div. 11.148: That this passage had
areal target remains true even if it was not meant to express Cicero’s personal views, as is maintained
by M. Schofield 1986 (H 116).

107 Thesleff 1965 (H 126) 4qff is sceptical of Nigidius’ Pythagoreanism. Cic. Vat. 14; Schol. Bob. ad
loc. The Invective against Sallust, purporting to be by Cicero, mentions the sodalicium of Nigidius.

108 Div. 1.§; 62; 1.119; L102.

109 Gell. N.A x.4; Cic. Tuse. 1.62. For the view of Chrysippus, see von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum
Fragmenta, 1, ft. 893, on which see Dillon 1977 (H 31) 181.

"0 The first suggestion is that of Thesleff 1961 (H 125) 52; the second of Dillon 1977 (H 31)
117~19.

Mt In the 6os a.p. Seneca (Q.Naft. vit.32.2) speaks of the Pythagorean school as having no
praeceptor and of the Sextii as a separate sect, while noting practices of theirs (Ep. 108.17-18; Ira
111.36.1) that were thought of as Pythagorean (Ov. Met. xv.6off: Cic, Sen. 38). For charismatic
individuals thought of as Pythagorean in the second half of the second century A.D.: C. P. Jones,
Culture and Society in Lucian (Cambridge, MA, 1986) 30, 135.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

7190 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

Platonism. By the Antonine period, Nigidius himself was hardly read;
his scholarship was not as closely related to Roman life as Varro’s, and it
was more abstrusely written.!!2

VI. THE NEW POETRY

The basis of the Greek style of education was poetry. At Rome epic
declined after Ennius, and tragedy and comedy were largely replaced by
the humbler mime. Although some aristocrats in Terence’s day were
suspected of writing poetic drama which they would not avow, by the
end of the second century the consular Q. Catulus was only one of
several to compose, quite openly, Latin epigrams in the current Greek
mode, !13

Though Cicero himself advertised the glories of his consulship in
poetry as well as prose, his social peers seem to have written verse mostly
for amusement in particularly tedious moments. Thus Caesar composed
a poem on his journey from Rome to Spain, and Quintus Cicero, when
serving on Caesar’s staff in Gaul, wrote four tragedies in sixteen days.
The youthful Varro, however, composed Menippean satires in a
combination of prose and verse, which he seems to have thought of as a
kind of popular philosophy.!!4

In the next generation, possibly under the influence of Parthenius, a
recherché type of Greek poetry became fashionable, as Catullus and
those whom Cicero calls the ‘neoteroi’, the ‘new poets’, sought inspi-
ration from Callimachus and Euphorion. Though this is no place to
discuss literary fashions as such,"!5 it is worth noting their connexion
with general intellectual developments. This ‘neoteric’ poetry was
learned poetry, written for an elite and requiring knowledge not only of
Greek literature and scholarship but of Greek science, notably astron-
omy, such as was available in Aratus’ poem. Even Lucretius, an
apparently isolated figure, is a product of his time in his exhibition of
Greek learning, including Aratean astronomy, his interest (shared by
Posidonius and Varro) in the history of civilization, his determination to
conquer a new province for Latin literature, and his poetic inventiveness
and sophistication, comparable to that of his ‘neoteric’
contemporaries.!'6

"12 Gell. NA x1x.14.2-3.

"3 Cic. Brut. 132; Gell. NA xtx.g~10.

4 Caesar’s Iter: Suet. Iu/. 56.5; Quintus: Cic. OFr. 111.5(6).7; Varro: Cic. Acad, 1.18.7.

15 On which see now Clausen 1982 (H 26).

6 Dalzell 1982 (B 24) 210; Grimal 1978 (H 54), though the links Grimal sees with contemporary
politics are not convincing.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE NEW POETRY Vil

VII. HISTORY AND RELATED STUDIES

In two celebrated passages, written at the mid-point of the first century
B.c., Cicero laments the absence of a Latin equivalent to the great
historians of Greece.'!7 Though his principal criticisms of Latin historio-
graphy down to his time were about style, he also reveals, here and
elsewhere, much about the conception of the historian’s task in his own
day.

Cicero assumes that the choice of subject for the historian lies between
recounting contemporary events or starting de Romulo et Remo. The
earliest Roman annalists, who were senators, had started from the
beginning of Rome’s history; but, from the last third of the second
century B.c., that type of history was left to lesser men, and senators
turned to writing the history of a period they had lived through or
monographs on particular subjects.!!8 (An exception was Licinius Macer
who, in the 7os, went back to the beginning in order to impart a popularis
bias to the history of early times and celebrate the deeds of his ancestors.)

At the turn of the century L. Coelius Antipater wrote a history of the
Hannibalic War, and Sempronius Asellio wrote up the events of his own
troubled times, in which he had played an active part.!!9 The most
illustrious historian in this tradition was L. Cornelius Sisenna, one of
Sulla’s most trusted adherents, who told the story of the Social War and
the civil wars from Sulla’s standpoint. Though Sallust was to pay him the
compliment of starting his history where Sisenna’s finished, Cicero
regarded him only as less bad than the others. Among other things, he
disliked his idiosyncratic style, full of neologisms and unusual word
forms, for Sisenna’s adherence to ‘analogy’ was not accompanied, as it
was in Caesar’s case, by severe self-restraint: he wanted to correct and
reform common linguistic usage.!20

Cicero’s correspondent L. Lucceius, possibly in order to give a more
balanced account, wrote on the same subject.!2! Cicero’s letter to
Lucceius urging him to compose a monograph on Cicero’s role in the
Catilinarian crisis and its aftermath fills out our evidence for what he and
his contemporaries felt about the writing of history. Cicero expected

"7 De Or. 11.5 1ff, Leg. 1.5ff. In the latter he represents himself as turning down a request by his
brother and his friend Atticus to write history himself.

18 Publication of the annales maximi is adduced as the reason for this change by Badian 1966 (H 4);
Ogilvie 1965 (8 79) 7ff; Rawson 1985 (H 109) 218, prefers to stress the influence of contemporary
events and of Polybius. 9 Cie, De Or. 11.54; Gell. NA 11.13.

120 Sall. Iug. 95.3; Cic. Leg. 1.7; Brut. 228; 260-1. On his writing see Badian 1966 (H 4) 25-6;
Rawson 1979 (H 108).

121 Fam. v.12, 1-2. This work may be covered by Cicero’s allusion in Leg 1.7, written ¢. 52, to

those whose work had not yet been published, for when Cicero wrote the letter in 55 he had seen
some of it but it was not finished.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

7i2 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

Roman historians and their readers to be aware of the Greek historical
tradition, as is shown by the precedents he cites to Lucceius and his
strictures elsewhere on Sisenna for reading only Clitarchus. The great
work of Polybius will have brought that tradition closer to the Romans.
Cicero assumed that Lucceius (and the others he intended to read his
letter — his ‘very pretty piece’!?2) would agree with him that history
should be written primarily by and for men in public life, and that it must
explain events in terms of accident and human intent, exploring the
motives and characters of the participants so as to furnish political
models and moral lessons.

Sempronius Asellio had already made most of those points, and
Cicero makes them again through Asellio’s contemporary M. Antonius
in De Oratore. Cicero’s Antonius, however, like Lucceius and Cicero
himself, is clearly more concerned with style and with enlivening
qualities than Asellio or Polybius had been.!23 Yet Cicero does not even
deign to mention the later annalists, Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius
Antias, who attached great importance to entertainment, for they
achieved it by wild exaggeration and invention.!24 Cicero distinguishes
sharply between the licence permitted to poets and the truth required of
historians: facts, not fiction, in reporting, and fairness, not bias, in giving
judgement, with the emphasis on the latter. Polybius had stressed
impartiality, and Cicero regards this as the foundation on which the
elaborate structure of history must be built.!25 It is clear that Lucceius
claimed to do this in the prologue to one of his compositions, and that
Cicero, when he urged him to glorify his own deeds even at the expense
of the /eges historiae, was only putting up a pretence of modesty: he clearly
expected everyone to feel that of his own merits there cou/d be’ no
exaggeration.

Cicero at least avoided violating his own rule about impartiality and
did not publish his account of his own exploits in Latin prose (only one
in verse). (The vituperative De Consiliis Suis was written for Atticus’
private perusal and only published posthumously.) He did, however,
provide Lucceius, who had agreed to Cicero’s request, with commentarii,
i.e. a bare narrative outline of facts without embellishment.!26 A similar
outline in Greek had been sent to Posidonius in 60 in the hope that he
would help to ensure Cicero’s reputation. When the notable historian

122, Att. 1v.6.4. 123° Fam. v.12.4; De Or. 11.62-3; Gell. NA v.18.7.

124 Badian 1966 (H 4) 18-22. On Valerius’ mendacity, Livy xxv1.q9; Ogilvie 1965 (B 79) 12-16.

125 Leg. 1.3~5; Polyb. 1.14; Cic. De Or. 11.62.

126 De Consulatu Suo in Greek prose: Att. 1.20.6, De Temporibus Meis in Latin verse: Aff 1v.8a, 3;
Fam. 1.9.23 shows that he considered posthumous publication even for the poem — see Shackleton
Bailey 1977 (B 110) ad loce. De Consiliis Suis: Att. 11.6.2; Alt. 11.8,1; Rawson 1982 (B 94). The Latin
commentarii: Att. 1v.6.4; V.11.2, also Fam. v.12,10; those planned in 60 (A#t. 1.19.10) are not heard
of again.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

HISTORY AND RELATED STUDIES 713

evaded the task with the compliment that the excellence of Cicero’s work
had only deterred him from attempting it, Cicero had the outline
circulated in Greece. He himself and others had made the same point
about the daunting brilliance of Caesar’s commentarii on his exploits in
Gaul, which were ostensibly written as raw material for historians.!27

These two skilled performers had found a subtle solution to the
problem confronting the ambitious politicians of the period, who
naturally wished to glorify their own exploits and stamp their own
interpretation on events in which they had taken part. Indeed, the
political turmoil of the late Republic did not produce the classic history,
contemporary or annalistic, that Cicero contemplated: Sallust and Livy
were to fulfil that task after his death and not as he had imagined.'%8
Instead there developed, on the one hand, literature that reflected the
dominance of powerful individuals, and, on the other, scholarship that
celebrated what was being destroyed.

Cicero’s commentarii were probably on the scale of the Liber de
Consulatu et de Rebus Gestis Suis of Q. Lutatius Catulus (cos. 102 B.c.), but
the works De Vita Sua of M. Aemilius Scaurus (cos. 115), P. Rutilius
Rufus and Sulla the dictator were more substantial. Though the two
earlier authors were already ignored by the reading public a generation
later, the works of Rutilius and Sulla were very influential: Rutilius
reached Plutarch via Posidonius.!29 Their bias, well attested in the case of
the virtuous Rutilius who blackened Marius and Pompey’s father, was,
in the case of Sulla, to leave a permanent mark on the Romans’
interpretation of their history. Even after Cicero’s scruples, Varro did
not hesitate to write three books of autobiography: he lived through the
triumviral period and had a lot to tell.!5°

At about the same time there arose out of this autobiographical
tradition and the Peripatetic tradition of literary biography, with some
inspiration from Varro’s Hebdomades and the eulogies and invectives
prompted by the younger Cato’s death in 46 B.c., the biographies of
statesmen, generals and kings which Cornelius Nepos included in his De
Viris IMustribus.3

Why Cicero did not write his history can only be surmised. He himself
notes that a great deal of time would be required: the pains he took to be

127 Aft, 11.1.2 cf. 1.19.10, see above, p. 699; Brut. 262 with Douglas 1966 (8 29) ad /oc., Hirtius
BGall. vint, pref. 4-5.

128 Syme 1964 (B 116) ch. 5; Rawson 1972 (H 104) 42-3. "29 Cic. Brut. 112; 132.

10 De Vita Sua: HRR M1, XXXvIIII-Xxxx: some of the details about Varro’s career in Pliny the
Elder (e.g. HN vit.115; xvt.7) may derive from this work.

131 The thesis of Geiger 1985 (8 42) that political biography was an innovation of Cornelius
Nepos (p. 61) requires him to maintain, implausibly, that the work of Munatius Rufus on the
younger Cato (Plut. Cat, Min. 25.1; 37) was not a biography, but a memoir which stopped at the
outbreak of civil war.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

714 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

accurate about the settings and participants in his dialogues suggest his
high standards of historical research, while his consultation of Varro and
Atticus shows that he would have accepted the labour imposed by the
new antiquarianism.!32 We can trace the first serious enthusiasm for
uncovering the history of Rome’s institutions, customs and language
to the days of Cicero’s youth when M. Junius Congus Gracchanus
dedicated a work on the powers of magistrates to Atticus’ erudite father.
In De Oratore Cicero attributes to Crassus enthusiasm for these Aesiana
studia, which are furthered by the study of ancient Roman law: Cicero
himself had studied with Aelius Stilo. Just as it is reasonable to connect
those interests with the political crisis that the Gracchi set in motion by
challenging the established order, so it is tempting to trace the second
wave of antiquarianism in Cicero’s maturity to the new crisis provoked
by the tactics of the ‘First Triumvirate’.133

Fundamental for history was the establishment of accurate chrono-
logy. By 54 Nepos had produced a list of events from the earliest times to
his own day in three books. Atticus improved on it and contracted the
material into one book, starting with the foundation of Rome. Cicero, to
whom this /éber annalis was dedicated, praised it for making oratory easier
and works like the Brutus possible. Cicero seems to have used both
works, though he preferred the one by Atticus: Varro may later have
improved on both.!34 Atticus also prepared, at the request of their
descendants, genealogies of several great families, giving filiations and
listing magistracies with precise dates.!35His Roman emphasis was again
apparent in his picture album, inspired by Varro’s Hebdomades but
celebrating only the magistracies and achievements of great Romans. 136

The Chronica of Nepos was the first work of Roman historiography
not concerned with exclusively Roman and Italian history. It was based
on the verse chronicle of Apollodorus, a second-century Athenian
scholar, and synchronisms of Greek and Roman history were an
important feature, which looked forward to the universal histories of the
Augustan age.!37 Polybius had been the first to see that the Roman
Empire had to be treated in a history embracing the whole of the known
world, but his example was not imitated in the Republic except by
Posidonius, who continued his history from 146 into the 80s B.c. This
work, though excellent in its breadth of interest, ethnographical insight,

132, Leg. 1.8; Sumner 1973 (B 115) 161ff; Rawson 1972 (H 104), who notes the increase in Cicero’s
knowledge between De Oratore and Brutus.

33 Cic. Leg. 1.49; Nep. Aft.1; De Or. 1.256; 193; Brut. 207. See Rawson 1972 (H 104).

‘34 Nepos: Gell. NA xvi.21.3; Atticus: Nep. Aft. 18.2; Cic. Ast, xi1.23.2; Orat, 120; Brut. 14-16,
Varro: Gell. N.A xvut.21.23 mentions chronici which Peter (HRR 1.24, xxxvui1) identifies with his
Annalium WU.

135 Nep. Aft. 18.3. 13% Nep. Aft. 18.5-6; see above, pp. 706-7.

137 Geiger 1985 (B 42) 68-72; Momigliano 1984 (H 86).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CICERO’S THEORETICAL WORKS 715

and understanding of mass psychology, imbued Roman political history
with the uncritical ancestor-worship of his Roman sources and the
particular political bias of Rutilius Rufus. If already known by 60, the
history may be what encouraged Cicero to ask for a eulogy from the same
hand, but Cicero never mentions the work itself.!38

Plutarch says that Cicero intended to blend Greek material into his
Roman history, but the closest he ever actually came to historical
subject-matter was in the De Republica and the Brutus. The introduction
to De Oratore 111, however, may give us some idea of what his historical
narrative would have been like.!99 The loyal Cornelius Nepos, though
writing after Sallust and perhaps in the very year of his death, says that
only Cicero could have given Latin literature a history worthy of the
Greeks. He adds that it was Cicero’s eloquence that gave polish to
Roman oratory and refinement to philosophy in Latin, both of which
were crude and primitive before. !4°

VIIE, CICERO’S THEORETICAL WORKS

The works to which Nepos refers last belong to the end of Cicero’s life.
They show us how he thought his talents could be best employed to
serve his country and his own reputation, once his role in politics was
diminished, as it was in the 5os, or obliterated, as in the gos until Caesar’s
assassination.

‘Non hominis nomen sed eloquentiae’ was Quintilian’s tribute to
Cicero. Cicero’s own notorious description to Atticus of some of his
writings as ‘mere transcripts, requiring less work; I just contribute the
words, which I have in plenty’, though not to be taken literally, shows
that he thought of himself primarily as a man of words.'*!His unrivalled
control of Latin was acknowledged by his contemporaries in their
dedication to him of linguistic works: it was probably in the De Axalogia
that Caesar wrote ‘You have won greater laurels than the triumphal
wreath, for it is a greater achievement to have extended the frontiers of
the Roman genius than those of Rome’s empire.’!42

Cicero’s concentration on the concept of the ideal orator in all his
mature rhetorical works, as well as the broad hint at the end of the Brutus,
shows that he knew he was unsurpassed in oratory and could impart

138 Posidonius’ history: Malitz 1983 (B 69). Posidonius died in the 50s and the work could have
been written late in his life.

139 Plut. Cie. 41; Rawson 1972 (H 104) 434. 140 Nep. fr. 3.

'4t Quint. x.1.112; Aff, x1.52.3. It is not clear to which of the philosophical works that Cicero
was writing in June 45 the remark refers. A comparison is being made either with other works of his
own or with the work of Varro.

42 Pliny FIN vit.117. See also the flattering citation from the work (here mentioned under the
Latin title De Ratione (atine Loquendi) in Cicero’s Brutus 253-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

716 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

something valuable from his experience. He counts these works among
his philosophical writings, for Aristotle and Theophrastus had laid
down precepts for oratory, while Cicero’s ideal was the philosophical
rhetoric of Aristotle and Isocrates. The dialogue form itself was
borrowed from Plato and Aristotle.'43 Moreover, Cicero was at pains to
insist that the works were not technical treatises, and though he thought
they would be useful to the young, he presented himself as a critic not a
teacher. He had in mind here not only that an ars would not be literature
and would suggest the Greek professional rather than the Roman
gentleman scholar, but also his belief that the Hellenistic rhetors up to
his own day took too limited a view of their subject.'44 Therefore he tried
to camouflage his treatment of the main topics in such manuals and also
covered subjects not usually included, such as prose rhythm and the
abstract philosophical themes for declamation known as Béaets.'45

His contact with the scholarly concerns of his time is shown already in
De Oratore, written in 55, where he exhibits considerable knowledge
both of Greek cultural history and of Roman education and intellectual
interests at the dramatic date of the dialogue, 91 B.c. Then, in the Brutus,
Cicero uses the new chronological tools to create a new form, the
historical survey in the shape of a dialogue. Nepos’ series of lives of
intellectuals in the Greek manner is part of the same phenomenon,!*
which was not confined to contemporary Rome: the Greek Academic
philosophers who taught Cicero were, after all, interested in the history
of philosophical doctrines, and that interest is reflected in Cicero’s
history of philosophy in De Oratore 111.6off.

The rhetorical works constitute a contribution to the old debate of
thetoric and philosophy specifically mentioned here. Though the
dramatic date of De Oratore did not allow Cicero to stray chronologically
beyond the controversy in Athens that Crassus and Antonius had heard
and the innovation of the philosopher Philo in treating not only bécecs
but the more concrete controversiae,'*’ the issue was not dead when Cicero
was writing. Only six years previously Posidonius had delivered a
lecture before Pompey at Rhodes in which he attacked, in the name of
philosophy, the claim made for rhetoric by the influential second-
century rhetorician Hermagoras that such general questions of a

143° Div. 11.4; Fam. 1.9.23: ‘Aristoteliam et Isocratiam rationem oratoriam’. In De Or. 1.28 and the
final prophecy about Hortensius, there are clear allusions to Plato’s Phaedrus, while the subject
matter owes much to the Gorgias (cf. 111.128-9). Cicero thinks of the form of De Oratore as
Aristotelian dialogue (Fam. 1.9.23) and the Brutus is even more in that tradition as Cicero is the main
speaker (Afét. xut.19.4).

4 De Or. tir; 1653 11.10; Orat. 117; 112; 123; 43. For the young: De Or. 11.4 cf. Fam. 1.9.23;
Roman amateurs: De Or. 1.115; 138; Greek rhetors: 111.70.

45° De Or. 111.188; 108-9. See Barwick 1963 (H 6).

‘© The Brutus: Douglas 1966 (B 29) xxii-xxiii; Nepos: Fantham 1981 (B 34) 7-17; Geiger 1985 (B
42) 23. 147 De Or. 1.47; 75; 83f; ut.10; Tuse. 11.9.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CICERO’S THEORETICAL WORKS 717

philosophical nature belonged to the province of the orator. This claim
Cicero had ridiculed over twenty years earlier but now sought to assert
for the ideal oratorical education he proposed.!48

A newer Roman controversy comes to the fore in the Brutus and
Orator, composed in 46. Some of the younger orators, in reaction against
Hortensius and Cicero, began to espouse a more austere style, deeming
themselves Atticists, champions of the pure oratory of classical Athens,
and opponents of the verbose and flowery ‘Asianic’ style that had
developed in the Greek diaspora.!4° The leader of the movement seems
to have been C. Licinius Calvus and, as with the new poetry in which
Calvus was also involved, the reaction took the form of emulating Greek
writers not previously important in Rome, in this case the orator Lysias.
Cicero responded by improving his knowledge of Lysias and then
pointing out that the greatest ‘Attic’ orator had in fact been Demos-
thenes, who represented a further development in rhetorical history and
was the master of all three styles of oratory (Grand, Middle, and Plain),
not just one.!5° Cicero implies that the Atticist movement, which
developed in the late sos, had lost its force by 45 B.c., because its
proponents, hostile to his own command of the full resources of oratory
which they were unable to master, had ignored the fact that oratory is a
popular art.!5!

After De Oratore, but while he was still in some sense ‘at the helm of the
state’, Cicero composed De Republica and started the De Legibus, which
he never completed. As in De Oratore, the inspiration of Plato is explicit
but his ideas are transformed: Cicero is giving the Roman answer to
Plato, setting up a Roman ideal grounded in ancestral wisdom.!52 Just as
Cicero’s ideal orator was a Roman statesman, versed in all subjects but
only to the extent that is practically necessary, so his ideal state was nota
theoretical construction but the Roman state, analysed here as the mixed
constitution of Greek theory and restored to its idealized past condition,
as it could in fact be if run by men of high principle and appropriate
education like Cicero’s ideal orator.!53

‘48 Plut. Pomp. 42.5: on the various sources and interpretations of this incident, see Malitz 1983 (B
69) 25-7; Posidonius’ speech was later published. Cic. Inv. 1.6.8; De Or. 111.106-7; 120; Orat, 125, On
Cicero’s originality here, see Grube 1965 (H 55) 17475.

149 Brut. 50; 67-8; 325 and Douglas 1966 (B 29) xiiff. For Brutus’ possible sympathy with the
Atticist movement, see Douglas 1966 (B 29) xiii-xiv.

150 Brut. 284ff; 35; 185; Orat. 23ff; 75; 234. On Cicero’s increase in knowledge of Greek oratory
between De Oratore and these later works, Douglas 1966 (B 29) xiv-xvi and 1973 (H 35) 103-6.

151 Tuse. 11.3.

152 Rep. 1.65; 11.3; 22; §15 1V.4—5; Leg. 11.14. Cicero’s remark (Rep. 1.16) about Plato ascribing his
own ideas to Socrates warns us not to take too seriously his account of the learning and interests of
his ‘Scipionic circle’.

‘53, Possibility of restoration is hinted at in Rep. v.2 and Leg. 111.29. Cicero clearly envisages more
than one rector rei publicae at a time (Rep. 11.67, and see De Or. 1.211); importance of education: Leg.

111.29. See Coleman 1964 (H 27) 13-14 0n the relation of the rector of De Republica to De Or. 111.65 and
Cicero’s conception of his own qualities at Rep. 1.6; 13; Leg. 111.14 ad fin.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

718 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

The intellectual interests of his age are everywhere apparent. For the
history of the Roman monarchy and early Republic he made critical use
of the Roman annalists and Varro’s researches, and for De Legibus he
consulted old senatorial decrees and used etymology to reconstruct
social customs.'!54 The skeletal law code he presents, starting with a
definition of law and and exploration of its nature and then working
systematically through divine, religious and secular law, reminds one of
the project ascribed to Crassus in De Oratore of reducing Roman ius civile
to an ars in the Greek sense. But here Cicero is putting Roman law itself,
regarded as the most appropriate intellectual activity for Roman states-
men, into a larger framework of human nature and natural justice,
derived from philosophy. Finally, De Republica, particularly the Somnium
Scipionis corresponding to Plato’s Pythagorean Myth of Er, abounds in
the fashionable numerology and astronomy associated with Pythagoras’
name. 155

In the period of his enforced leisure under the dictatorship, Cicero
composed what he regarded as his most serious works, those treating the
philosophical doctrines of the Hellenistic schools.!5° Though philos-
ophy was a life-long interest and there were emotional reasons, such as
the death of his daughter in 45, for his choice,!5’ the sheer difficulty of
expounding philosophy in Latin must have made it an attractive
challenge. It was not absolutely virgin territory. The Epicureans: had
been first, Amafinius, Rabirius, Catius and others who, by their own
confession, wrote without technical language and without the defini-
tions and divisions of a proper ars. Cicero says that they also had no
pretensions to literary skill and thus appealed only to the converted and
the poorly educated.!58 Though Cicero remarks that such a simple type
of exposition was only possible for such a simple philosophy, Cassius
complains about rustici Stoici as well.'59

Cicero may have read Lucretius’ work, but a poet naturally
approaches exposition in a different way and is not as free to invent and
explain technical terms. Cicero does not seem to have learned much from

154 Rawson 1972 (H 104) 36-8. Use of Varro: Cic. Aft. 1v.14,1, but see Shackleton Bailey 1965—
1970 (B 108) ad loc.

155 Leg. 11.18ff; De Or. 1.190; Fin. 1.12; Leg. 1.16-17. Pythagoreanism: see Coleman 1964 (H 27).

186 Diy, 11.1-7; Orat. 148.

157. Nat.D. 1.9; Div. 11.3 which brings out the relevance of the death of Cato, the Stoic par
excellence, in 46 B.c. Earlier in that year, when Cato was leading the Republican forces in Africa,
Cicero had composed the Paradoxa Stoicorum with him in mind (1ff).

138 Acad. 1.5; Fin. 11.40; Tuse. 1.6; 1.7. Not mentioned is Atticus’ Epicurean friend L. Saufeius
(Nep. Aft. 12.3; Cic. Aft. vit.t; 1v.6) who was a writer on philosophical themes (Aé#. 1.3.1) in
Latin(?): see Rawson 1985 (H 109) 9.

159 Fan. xv.19.1. Shackleton Bailey 1977 (B 110) ad /oc., while admitting that the context suggests
writers in Latin, believes these were Greek writers, but Tuse. 1v.6 only says there were few in Latin.
Rawson 1985 (B 109) 49 and 284-5 adduces the Stoics ridiculed by Horace.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CICERO’S THEORETICAL WORKS 719

him.! More important was the example of Brutus, whose De Virtute
preceded Cicero’s ethical works and whom Quintilian places second to
Cicero.'6! Yet his judgement on Brutus, ‘You can tell that he means what
he says’, suggests a passionate style of exposition not suitable to Cicero’s
balanced presentation of philosophical views or to his discussion of
Greek terms and the problems of translation. If modern scholars often
regret that Cicero, in his determination to be readable, was not consistent
in the translations he adopted, for Seneca and Quintilian he was already
the ultimate authority on philosophical vocabulary, while for St Augus-
tine he was the originator and perfector of Latin philosophy.!6

One of the attractions for Cicero of writing about philosophy must
have been the fact that Varro had so far eschewed the task. Indeed, in the
second edition of the Academica, which Cicero had rewritten so as to
include Varro as an interlocutor, Cicero represents him as objecting to
the idea of writing philosophy in Latin on the ground that for those who
cannot face it in Greek it will be too difficult in Latin, requiring, as it is
bound to, the creation of new terms (1.5—6). He is then made to disprove
his own contention by expounding the philosophical system he favours,
employing new words and justifying them (1.24). Cicero’s Varro points
to the philosophy included in his Menippean satires, funeral orations and
the prefaces to his Antiquitates (1.8), but it was only after Cicero’s
Academica that Varro himself produced serious philosophical works,
including a Liber de Philosophia in which, after taking to extremes the
Carneadean notion of classifying different possible systems by different
conceptions of the ultimate aim, he came down in favour of the ‘Old
Academy’ of Antiochus of Ascalon. He also wrote /ogistorici, dialogues
with double titles on particular philosophical topics of more general and
practical interest, rather in the manner of Cicero’s Cato de Senectute or
Laelius de Amicitia.

In philosophy it was Cicero who was the encyclopaedist. Within two
years he had treated all three branches into which the post-Aristotelian
schools regularly divided the subject: logic represented by the Acade-
mica, ethics mapped out in De Finibus, and physics to which he devoted
De Natura Deorum. The last two subjects were then pursued in works on
specific practical questions in which Cicero’s own views were made more
explicit, the last being De Offciis in which he recommends his philosophi-
cal writings to his son, as contributing even more to the development of
the Latin language than to the subject-matter of philosophy (1.1-2). He
goes on to name the Stoics, Academics and Peripatetics as respectable
guides for conduct and says he is following the Stoics here, not as a mere

160 OFF. 11.9.3. ‘ol Cic. Fin. 1.8; Quint. 1.1.123; see also n. 63, above.
93 3

162 Aug. Contra Acad. 1.8; Sen. Ep. 58.6; Quint. 11.14.43 Plut. Cie. 40. Seneca, however, still
complains about the jejuneness of Latin, despite Cicero, Fin. 1.10; Nat.D. 1.8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

720 18, INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

translator but using his own judgement in selecting from his sources, as
is his usual custom (1.5—6).

Based on this passage and others like them, a view of Cicero’s
philosophical writing and philosophical understanding has long pre-
vailed which, crudely summarized, is that Cicero was able to produce
these works at high speed by simply reproducing arguments he found in
works by Greek philosophers, adapting them to his setting and speakers
and embellishing them with Roman examples and digressions; he was
not concerned with philosophical consistency but followed, in an
eclectic fashion, the views of different schools on different subjects; he
had no use for the more technical aspects of Hellenistic philosophy;
while Greeks continued to write and argue about such aspects, Cicero
and his countrymen were only interested in ethics of a practical sort. This
conception, developed in the nineteenth century, is now being seriously
revised. It is worth looking at the different points separately.

Cicero makes no secret of his use of Greek sources. In fact, Pliny the
Elder, while noting the habit of even the most respectable modern
writers of simply transcribing older writers verbatim without acknow-
ledgement, singles out Cicero for his honesty: ‘In De Republica he
declares himself an acolyte of Plato, in his Consolation a follower of
Crantor and in De Officiis of Panaetius.’!63 Elsewhere Cicero was not so
explicit, but in the Academica, for example, he intimates that he had to
hand two books of Philo of Larissa and a reply by Antiochus of
Ascalon.'64 On the other hand, he says that the work of Posidonius, to
which he had recourse when Panaetius failed him in De Offeiis, was only a
brief summary and that he had to rely considerably on his own
invention.'65 He was particularly proud of the Academica and thought it
acute in argument and surpassing anything in Greek of its kind. And in
De Finibus he draws a parallel between his works as they relate to their
Greek sources and the works of later Stoics like Panaetius and Posido-
nius writing on the same subjects as Chrysippus but in a different way.
Yet he assumed that only Romans would, and should, read the
philosophy that he and Brutus wrote.!66

The issue is complex, involving such difficult questions as what we
mean by translation, what intellectual activity is involved in rendering
abstract concepts in another language, and, finally, what counts as being

16 HN pref. 22-3. Cf. Off. 11.60; 111.7; Aft, XVI.11.2.

164 Acad. t.11~12. Antiochus’ work was called Sosus. On these works and the use Cicero made of
them, see Glucker 1978 (H 48) esp. ch. 1 and Excursus 1 and Barnes 1989 (H $§).

465 Art, xviit.g; Off. 111.8; 34 cf. 1.159. He may only have seen the summary of the work of
Posidonius made by Athenodorus Calvus (Aff, xvt.11.4).

166 In Aff. xui1.19.5 Cicero claims that the revised Academica combined the acumen of Antiochus
with the nifor of his own (clearly superior) style; Aff. x111.18; 13.1; Fé. 1.6 where Cicero’s parallel
relates to other philosophical sects as well.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CICERO AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY 721

a philosopher. There is force in recent arguments that Cicero, given his
excellent memory, could use his broad philosophical training and his
wide reading, which the letters show often went beyond what was
necessary for the particular work in hand, to select and organize
appropriate arguments into an account of the doctrines of Greek
philosophers, adding personal criticisms and illustrations — which 1s all
he claimed to do. That is not the work of an original philosopher in the
highest sense, but it involves not just repeating the issues but really
understanding them.!6? That is an activity which, reasonably enough,
qualifies one to be called a philosopher in most academic institutions.

IX. CICERO AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

Cicero has often been described as an ‘eclectic’. He accepted, for
example, the Stoics’ view of ethics and of divine providence but rejected
their epistemology and, apparently, their views on fate. He was ideally
suited to his role of encyclopaedist because he had been exposed in youth
to teachers of all the main philosophical schools.!% Others of his
contemporaries, like Atticus and Brutus, also made the rounds when in
Athens; some, like Cato, had ‘domestic chaplains’ of different doctrinal
persuasions.'©9 Even in the generation before, we hear of Aurelius
Opillus, the learned slave manumitted by his Epicurean master, who
taught ‘philosophy’ (unspecified) and later followed the Stoic Rutilius
Rufus into exile.!70 That example already reminds us that we are not
dealing only with an attitude of the upper-class dilettante Roman
consumer. Greek philosophy itself in this period has often been
characterized as ‘eclectic’, and the proliferation of commentaries, works
of exegesis and histories of philosophical sects points to scholarly
interest in studying different doctrines.!7! The disruption caused by the
Mithridatic Wars, which put an end to the Academy and Lyceum as
physical institutions and dispersed philosophers from Athens to rival
intellectual centres, discouraged organized school controversy.!72

The term ‘eclecticism’, however, is used in more than one sense.
Usually it signifies the assembling of doctrines from various schools on
the basis of personal preference without any explicit or proper rationale.
In this sense, it is currently being rejected as a characterization of

‘6? Boyancé 1936, 1970 (H 17); Douglas 1973 (H 35); Barnes 1985 (B 4).

468 Diodotus the Stoic lived and died in his house (Brut. 309); he heard Philo of Larissa in Rome in
88 (Brut. 306), Antiochus of Ascalon at Athens (Brut. 316; Fina. v.1; Tuse. v.22; Plut. Cie. 4); Phaedrus
and Zeno, Epicureans, at Athens in 79 and 78 (Fam. xitt.1.2; Fé#.1.16) and Posidonius at Rhodes
(Plut. Cie. 4; Nat.D. 1.6).

469 Cic. Fin. v.1; Plut. Brut. 24; Cat. Min. 65.5, and see Plut. Brut. 12.3. $70 Suet. Gram. 6.

' Donini 1982 (H 33) 36-9; Tarrant 1985 (H 122) 127-8.

172 Glucker 1978 (H 48); J. P. Lynch, Aristotle's School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution.
(Berkeley, 1972).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

722 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

thinking in the late Republic, because it is too pejorative and does not
reflect the way philosophers of the period viewed what they were
doing.!73

Cicero was behaving as a consistent adherent of the ‘New Academy’,
not only when he suspended judgement like a Sceptic, but when he
adopted doctrines from different schools because, after argument on
both sides, he judged them, at least on this occasion, to be probable.
That, after all, was the point on which Carneades himself had come
closest to definite do¢trine, and his teacher Philo had emphasized the
probable as a reasonable basis for action.!74 Antiochus of Ascalon,
however, who tried to steer the Academy in an even more dogmatic
direction, had a completely different rationale for intermingling theories
of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoa. He and his adherents had a theory about
the history of philosophy according to which Plato abandoned the
approach of his teacher Socrates, which was to question all opinions and
affirm nothing himself, and handed down a coherent body of doctrine.
This philosophy, though modified by Aristotle and changed in termino-
logy by the Stoics, had remained essentially the same, until Arcesilas and
Carneades denied the possibility of certain knowledge. Antiochus
presented his amalgam as the teaching of the ‘Old Academy’ ,!75 and it is
possible that a similar view of the history of philosophy, whereby the
Stoa was an improved version of the Academy, was held by Panaetius,
who went back to Plato and Aristotle on important points. He was
followed in his respect for the views of those philosophers by
Posidonius.!76

Epicureanism too, though the most conservative of the philosophical
sects, was being modified to answer objections. Thus Philodemus, who
came to Italy in the 70s and was closely attached to L. Calpurnius Piso,
seems to have qualified Epicurus’ idea that poetry distorted language
and was therefore inimical to truth. Following the lead of his teacher
Zeno of Sidon, he seems to have ascribed to Epicurus, in the teeth of
opposition from Epicureans outside Athens, the view that sophistic
rhetoric was a réxvy i.e. that there is an art of pure style that can be
taught. The popularity of Epicureanism in the upper classes in Cicero’s

173 When used of philosophers by ancient writers, however, ‘eclectic’? meant a member of a
separate and identifiable philosophical sect adhering to specific tenets, adopted from a number of
existing sects but presumably made to cohere in some way (D.L. 1.21 and see Galen xiv.684k;
XIX.353K). On the various ancient and modern uses (without reference to Cicero), see Donini 1988
(x 34).

174 Inv, Rhet. 1.10; Tuse. 1.17; u.5; v.82; Acad. 1.8; Off. 11.7-8; 111.205 33.

178 Cic. Acad. 1.15-18; Fin. v.93~5. Our ignorance of Plato’s oral teaching and the works of his
successor Polemon may have made his distortion seem greater than it was: Dillon 1977 (H 31) 11; §7—
8; Donini 1982 (H 33) 74.

176 Panaetius: fr. 57 van Straaten, p. 17; Cic. Fin. 1v.79; Tuse. 1.79; see Glucker 1978 (H 48) 28ff.
Posidonius: Edelstein—Kidd Fisoa, 151, 157.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CICERO AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY 723

time is well attested and may owe something to Philodemus’ personal
contacts and to his interest in poetry and rhetoric, subjects not associated
with the school before Zeno of Sidon. Even while ridiculing Philode-
mus’ patron Piso, Cicero is complimentary about the philosopher’s
elegant verse, of which samples survive in the Greek Anthology. It is true
that his views, in so far as they can be recovered from the charred remains
of the Herculaneum papyri, could not have appealed to a Varro or a
Cicero, since he denied any moral content to poetry (which he regarded
as a legitimate form of entertainment) or to oratory, and even denied the
status of a teachable art to political and forensic oratory.!7? None the less,
Zeno and Philodemus applied Epicurean attitudes to areas of current
intellectual interest at Rome, such as the relation of philosophy to
rhetoric, the classification of different types of style, and the criteria for
judging poetry.

Some Roman Epicureans, like Piso, could have been intrigued by
these developments, though Lucretius shows no clear awareness of the
philosophical polemics or changes current in his school. His contempor-
aries seem to have thought of him more as a poet than as a philosopher,
yet his poem was apparently kept with Greek Epicurean texts in the
library of Piso’s villa at Herculaneum.'78 It may not be fanciful to think
that, on the subject of poetry so close to his heart, he does implicitly
answer Philodemus. For while stressing the importance of the pleasure
to be derived from poetry in general (v.1450—-1) and from his own (1.28;
Iv.1~25), Lucretius suggests that, for the Epicurean goal of pleasure to
be fully achieved, that knowledge of the universe that he seeks to impart
is also necessary. In the De Rerum Natura, then, he eludes Philodemus’
distinction between the correct use of poetry to entertain and the
improper use of it to instruct.!79

That brings us to a very difficult general question: were the Romans
really aware of the deepest and most technical aspects of contemporary
Greek philosophy? Cicero shows not only L. Crassus but his own
contemporaries insisting on their amateur status, but wearing one’s
learning lightly does not mean one is ignorant. Cicero admits that, in the
first edition of the Academica, his speakers, Catulus, Lucullus and
Hortensius, were out of their depth; but that work contained more

7 Cic. Fin. 1.71-2; Pis. 28; 68-70; Grube 1965 (H 55) 193A; Rawson 1985 (H 109) 23-43 59-60;
280-1.

178 Furley 1978 (H 43). Cic. OFr. 11.10,3; Nep. Aft. 12.4 (who links him with Catullus as later
Velleius Paterculus 1.36.2), but cf. Vitr. 1x pref. 17 who is interested in the poem as a product of
sapientia. Kleve, ‘Lucretius in Herculaneum’, Cronache Ercolanesi 19 (1989) 5-27 claims to identify
lines of Lucretius Books 1, 111, 1v and v on badly preserved papyri and suggests that the poem
inspired Philodemus’ defence of epideictic oratory.

9 For the relation of his verse to his Epicureanism, see e.g. Dalzell, 1982 (B 24) 216 and Kenney
1977 (B53) 11.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

724 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

difficult material than most of his other works, and Cicero contrasts their
lack of expertise with the undoubted suitability for the dialogue of Cato,
Brutus and Varro. Moreover, though he had insisted on the real learning
of his original interlocutors in prologues which took in Plutarch, he did
actually rewrite the work so as to use Varro and himself instead.!8°

Cicero clearly did not expect his readers to believe that the discussions
he reports actually took place. They knew the mos dialogorum.'8' But can
we similarly dismiss the claim made by his Crassus to have disputed with
philosophers at Athens about the boundaries of rhetoric and philosophy,
or the report of his Lucullus that two Romans first reported to
Antiochus at Alexandria the revolutionary content of lectures that Philo
delivered at Rome in the 80s, and how the Elder Catulus objected to
Philo’s new theories?!82 Cicero himself clearly understood the intricacies
of the conflict between Philo and Antiochus and presented in the
Academica his own point of view, which was more sceptical than that of
Philo’s ‘Roman books’.!83 His concern with a debate that took place in
his youth does not mean that he was out of touch with current
developments, for the Academy seems to have been in the doldrums
since the death of Antiochus in the early Gos: many of Antiochus’
adherents defected, while Cicero himself represents the sceptical camp as
deserted, even in Greece.!84

That ethics made a particular appeal to the practical and moral sense of
the Romans can hardly be denied, but natural philosophy is strongly
represented by Lucretius and Catius, who wrote de rerum natura,'® by
Nigidius Figulus, and by Cicero, who not only translated Aratus and
part of the Timaeus, but was clearly fascinated by the questions of fate and
divination. On those subjects he not only wrote dialogues but liked
showing off his knowledge in writing to Varro.'86 If he shrank from
treating geography, it is as well to remember that Posidonius was

180 M. Pupius Piso (cos. 61) is made to say at Fin. v.8 that he never thought he would be holding
forth ‘ut philosophus’. Aff, xut.12.3; 19.5; 18.1; 16.1. Plutarch deceived: Plut. Lac. 42.4.

181 Fam. 1x.8.1. See also the hints given at De Or. 1.97; 11.13; 11.22; Rep.t.15.

182 De Or. 1.57; Acad. 1.12; 11. The two Romans brought a copy of Philo’s lectures written down
(‘the Roman books’) to Alexandria.

18 Acad. 11.64ff. According to Glucker 1978 (H 48) 413ff Cicero was following a subsequent work
of Philo; according to Tarrant 1985 (H 122) 42-3, Cicero tempered Philo’s view in the ‘Roman
books’ with his own common sense.

184 Acad. 11.11 (dramatic date 63—61 B.c.); Nat. D.1.6 (cf. 11).Aenesidemus probably dedicated his
Pyrrhonian Logoi to Cicero’s friend (Lig. 21) L. Aelius Tubero, an Academic of the same — namely
sceptical — tendency (aipears) as himself (Phot. Béb/. 212, 169633), in the early decades of the first
century B.C.: Tarrant 1985 (H 122) 60; 140 n. 4; Barnes 1989 (H 5) Appendix C.

185 Quint. x.1.24. Cicero compares Lucretius’ poem favourably in 54 8.c. (QFr. 11.10.3) with the
Empedoclea of Sallustius, which suggests that Sallustius’ poem also dealt with physics and was
perhaps based on Empedocles’ epi ddcews: see Rawson 1985 (H 109) 285.

186 Fam. 1x.4.1 (46 B.C.). It is no longer confidently believed that Cicero followed one Greek
source in De Fato, see Boyancé 1936, 1970 (H 17) and Barnes 1985 (B 4).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CICERO AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY 725

unusual among Greek philosophers in this period for the range of his
scientific interests, 187

It would not be pertinent here to consider how far the similarity
between Roman philosophical interests in this period and that of the
Greek schools was due to Greek efforts to please their Roman masters, '88
but it is worth returning briefly to the question raised earlier of the actual
importance of their intellectual interests to members of the Roman elite.

There were a few Romans who devoted themselves entirely to study
in this period, but Cicero was probably not alone in thinking that only
exceptional academic talent could justify such a course for those who had
access to a public career.'89 On the whole, the standard picture of the
Romans as uninterested in theory for its own sake can stand. It was the
Greek Sosigenes who wrote the astronomical treatises and did the
calculations on which Caesar’s reformed calendar was based, and
Cicero’s Crassus says that those engaged in public life can acquire the
necessary knowledge of philosophy and other studies quickly and
without strenuous effort.!% Indeed Cicero often speaks as if he favoured
the Academy and Peripatos because, as opposed to the Stoa and the
Garden, their training was good for one’s oratory,!9! and he regarded the
Roman constitution, which had evolved in practice, as superior to those
thought up by single law-givers, and Roman tradition and experience in
government as superior to Greek book-learning in general.!%

Greek writers were prone to suggest that Greek culture had a
beneficial effect on Roman political and moral conduct. Thus Posidonius
said of P. Scipio Nasica (cos. 111 B.C.) that ‘in practising his philosophy
in his life and not just his words, he maintained the tradition of his family
and his heritage of virtue’.!°3 Though there is an element of wishful
thinking in that, Romans such as Cicero, Cato and Varro did claim to live
their philosophical beliefs, while his friend and biographer vouches for
the role of philosophical precepts in Atticus’ freedom from anger.!%4 The
belief that philosophy influences conduct had a darker side too, as is

'87 See above, p. 706. None of the Middle Platonists (Dillon 1977 (H 31) 49) nor Philodemus
(Rawson 1985 (H 109) 295) seems to have been interested in the scientific end of natural philosophy.
But Strabo, pupil of Posidonius and continuator of his history, criticizes Roman writers of
geography for merely translating from the Greek (111.166c).

188 An affirmative answer is given to this question by Williams 1978 (H 135) 116-18; and by
Momigliano 1975 (H 85) 65~6; 121-2; and a predominantly negative answer by Rawson 1985 (H 109)
54-65.

'8 Pompey’s uncle Sextus Pompeius devoted himself to geometry; others to dialectic and law
(Cic. Of. 1.19) or to Stoic philosophy (De Or. 1.67; 111.87).

19 Pliny HIN xvitt.2z10; Rawson 1985 (H 109) 112; Cic. De Or. 111.86-8.

1 De Or. 111.80; 64ff; Brut. 120; 332, see also Quint. x11.2.25-9. 192 Rep. 11.2.

93 FGrH no.87, ft.112 = Diod. xxxiv/v.33, cf. Pluc. Cat. Mas. 23; Cie. 4.2 suggesting that Cicero
even contemplated devoting his life to philosophy ~ no hint of this in Brut. 314-16.

4 Cic, Nat.D.1.7; Acad. 1.7 (of Varro, presumably not misrepresenting this living and difficult
man); Fam. xv.4, 16 (Cato); Atticus: Nep. Aft. 17.3, ef. Cic. Aft. xvi.i1.3 and xv.2.4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

726 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

shown by the hostility to Greek doctrine as a corrupting influence which
could divert the young from traditional pursuits, seduce them away from
public life, or inculcate doctrines that were too impractical to be applied
there. Thus philosophers were expelled from Rome in 161 B.c. and the
embassy of 155 B.C. met with considerable hostility. A grammarian in the
late Republic was thought to be unsuited to keeping a public school
because he was an Epicurean (he had to retire and write history), and the
conviction of Rutilius Rufus was rightly taken to show that the Stoic
belief in unemotional oratory could be damaging, for Rutilius pleaded
his own case in that style and lost it.!95

There is, however, support in the ancient evidence for the popular
modern view that there was a complete dichotomy between the notions
the upper-class Roman imbibed from the Greeks and his standards of
Roman conduct, interest in things intellectual being just a fashionable
pose. So men who claimed to be Epicureans are found pursuing public
careers, and Cicero can make the pontifex C. Aurelius Cotta declare his
belief in traditional Roman religion while admitting that none of the
proofs for the nature and existence of the gods satisfy his standards as an
Academic philosopher.'% There is also ample support for the idea that
the Romans were casual to the point of frivolity about intellectual
matters. We have noted the insistence on amateur status and avoidance
of Greek sneptiae. Cicero recounts how the new governor of Asia stopped
in Athens en route, rounded up all the philosophers and urged them to
settle their differences employing him as arbitrator.!97 Sophisticated
Roman Epicureans looked down on the solemn orthodoxy of their
Greek teachers. The gourmet Papirius Paetus, when his tame philoso-
pher Dion tried to initiate a philosophical discussion by asking him to
pose a question, said there was one question which had been troubling
him all day: who would invite him to dinner?!%

Unconvincing attempts to make firm connexions between intellectual
concerns and political activity have only confused the issue. Thus
Cassius’ conversion to Epicureanism has been connected with his role in
the assassination of Caesar, though it took place four years before and is
associated, in his letters to Cicero, with an emphasis on peace and a
willingness to tolerate an old and clement master.!°° And Varro’s

95 Plut. Cat. Mai. 23; Suet. Gram. 8; Cic. Brut. 113A; De Or. 1.227ff, ef. DLL. vit.122.

196 Epicureans: Cic. Tuse. v.108; Fin. 11.76; Cotta: Nat.D 111.6-7.

‘7 Above, pp. 695-6. Cic. Leg.t.5 3: the point here is that Cicero and others thought this was a
joke, whether or not they were right: Badian 1976 (p 4) 126, n. 46 adduces possible political
implications.

98 Cic. Nat.D. 11.74; Atticus (see below, n. 204) is made to mock Epicurean orthodoxy in Cic.
Leg. 1.21; ut cf. Cicero’s teasing in Aft. vit.2.4. Paetus: Fam. tx.26.3: the word ‘baro’ used here,
though not restricted to Epicureans (see Fin. 11.76), is common in this context (e.g. Aft.v.11.6).

19 Momigliano 1941, 1960 (H 84) 15 1ff. Cic. Fam. xv1.3 (with Shackleton Bailey 1977 (8 110) vol.
tr, 378, S.v. ‘nuper’); Xv.15.1; 19.2 and 4.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CICERO AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY 727

Antiquitates have been seen as directly linked with commitment to Caesar
the dictator and his programme of moral and religious reform.2 Yet
Cicero’s De Republica and De Legibus, conceived in the os, already show
a concern for preserving and strengthening traditional institutions,
while the project Caesar ultimately adopted of reducing the ius civile to
order had been adumbrated in De Oratore in 54, was discussed further by
Cicero in a lost treatise, and was perhaps carried out by Servius Sulpicius
Rufus before 46.70! We are probably dealing with similar preoccupations
in intelligent men concerned with the political disruption around them.

It is more profitable to concentrate on the subtler contributions made
by intellectual developments to Roman life, namely, the provision of
tools of thought and expression. We have already noted the way the
Romans used their new knowledge and skill to define their own identity.
We can see Pythagorean numerology and Greek techniques of analysis
deeply ingrained in Varro’s thinking on any subject; we can observe the
effect of Caesar’s interest in analogy on his prose style.202 Cicero may
have been unusual in feeling that the connexion between philosophy and
conduct was so tight that it was wrong to commit oneself to Greek
doctrines that were incompatible with one’s belief in traditional Roman
morality;203 but the connexion can be seen in Atticus’ choice of
Epicureanism, which clearly suited his detached and placid personal-
ity,204 and Cicero’s selection of a creed that reflected his own open-
mindedness and love of debate.205 When we see Cicero analysing
possible courses of action in politics ‘by the Socratic method’, or
borrowing a Greek treatise on concord on the eve of the civil war, or
debating in Greek and Latin a series of philosophical #écecs on tyranny,
we can see that philosophy had entered his marrow.” But his correspon-
dence also reveals that his friends, too, told philosophical jokes and
resorted naturally to the same methods of analysis in trying to reach or
justify their decisions.207

200 Horsfall 1972 (H 60) admits that, even if both Antiguitates were written under the dictatorship,
the work must largely have been done earlier. Even 1 fr.z0 (Cardauns) of Rerum Divinarum, if it
alludes to Caesar’s claim to divine descent, is not entirely flattering: ‘etiamsi falsum sit’ (see
Cardauns’ commentary, 1976 (B 11) 149). For scepticism towards Horsfall’s arguments see Jocelyn
1982/3 (H 65): he favours the fifties for the composition of the work, but see n. 92 above.

201 Suet. Iu/. 44; Cic. De Or. 1.190; Gell. NA 1.22.7; Quint. xu.3.10; Cic. Brut. 152-3.

202 Above, pp. 701-3; Ogilvie 1982 (B 80) 283~q.

203 Fin, 11.67-8.

204 Atticus’ Epicureanism is well attested: Cic. Leg. 1.21354; U1.1; Ads. 1v.6.1, cf. Fin. 1.16 of his
youth. Cicero does not use him as an Epicurean spokesman, perhaps because the ironic Atticus
would have disliked being shown expounding a system (and see n. 198). On Nepos’ failure to
mention his Epicureanism, see Griffin 1989 (H 53) 18.

205 Cicero praises personal assessment and critical judgement over blind acceptance of authority
in his first work (Inv. Rhet. 11.4.5) and his last (Off. 11.8).

206 Att. 11.3.3 (60 B.c.); Aft. vitt.1t.7 (49); Aft. 1x.4 (49).

207 Fi.g. Varro: Pam. 1x.4; Fabius Gallus: Fam. vit.26; Trebatius: Pam. vit.12; Cassius: Fam.
xv.16; Ser. Sulpicius: Fam. v.19; Appius Claudius Pulcher: Fam. 11.7.5; 8.5; Cato: Fam. xv.qand 5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

728 18. INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

At the end of the Republic, the Romans had the sophisticated
intellectual equipment with which to formulate theories and express
differences of opinion about religion and history, morals and politics.
Yet these skills had not saved the Greeks from foreign rule, and they
could not save Rome from civil war and autocracy.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

CHAPTER 19

RELIGION

MARY BEARD

I. THE CONSTANTS

Roman religion had its centre in politics, military activity and public life.
The gods of the Roman state, in co-operation with its political leaders,
ensured Rome’s safety, prosperity and victory in war; while, on the part
of men, the proper fulfilment of ritual and cult obligations ensured the
gods’ continuing support of the city. Religion was not principally
concerned with private morality, ethics or the conduct of the individual
Roman citizen.

The support of the gods for the fortunes of Rome was direct and
active. They did not merely offer remote sanction to the conduct of
Rome’s political and military leaders; they intervened directly on Rome’s
behalf. Sometimes this intervention occurred, on the pattern of Greek
divine epiphanies, in the midst of battle — as when, according to legend,
Castor and Pollux came to the Romans’ aid at the battle of Lake Regillus
in 499 B.c.! On other occasions the gods were seen to be active in the
internal politics of the state. So Cicero claimed in his letters to Atticus
that they had been involved in the suppression of the Catilinarian
conspiracy, and, in the midst of Roman assemblies, a clap of thunder or
other ill omen might be taken as a direct sign of divine displeasure at the
proposal under discussion.?

When the state fared badly, it was assumed that the gods had withheld
their support. The major axioms of state religion were reversible: just as
the safety of Rome depended on the co-operation of the gods, which in
turn depended on the proper fulfilment of ritual, so it followed that
Rome’s failures stemmed ultimately from lapses, conscious or uncons-
cious, in the performance of cult obligations. The strength of this logic
was reinforced by a series of exemplary anecdotes, such as the story of
Publius Claudius Pulcher, during a naval campaign in the First Punic

' Cic. Nat.D. 1.6; Livy 11.20.12.

2 Catilinarian: Cic. Ass. 1.16.6 (a reference perhaps to the divine sign of a leaping flame,
encouraging Cicero in his resolve against the conspirators, at the ritual of the Bona Dea being
celebrated in his house, Plut. Cie. 19.3~4; 20.1-2). Ill omens: Obsequens 46; Plut. Cat.Min. 42.4
(though beware of Plutarch’s automatic assumption that the omen was fabricated).

729

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

730 19. RELIGION

War; exasperated that the oracular chickens kept on his ship would not
produce a favourable omen for engaging battle, he cast them overboard
to their deaths; as a consequence the Romans suffered a disastrous
defeat.3 The same logic may also be seen to have operated in a notorious
form of Roman ritual punishment. The six Vestal Virgins kept perma-
nently alight the flame at the sacred hearth of the city in the temple of
Vesta in the Forum; they were vowed to chastity, any breach of this vow
being punished by their burial alive. In 216 B.c. and 114-113 B.C. Vestals
were put to death on charges of unchastity. We cannot now assess the
truth behind the allegations, but we can detect a significant pattern: on
both occasions on which the priestesses suffered this punishment the
state was threatened with a military crisis — in 216 B.c., defeats in the
Second Punic War, in 114-113 B.c., the northern threat of the Cimbri
and Teutones, combined with the annihilation of C. Porcius Cato’s army
in Thrace. The proper conduct of the Vestals was vital for the safety of
Rome; when that safety was in doubt, so also was the proper conduct of
the Vestals.4

The political and military leaders of Rome not only co-operated
directly with the gods, they also handled the various axes of communica-
tion between the human and divine sphere. In a speech addressed to one
of the major colleges of priests, the pontifices, Cicero makes it clear that he
sees no distinction of personnel between the ‘religious’ and ‘secular’
authorities in the city:

Among the many divinely inspired expedients of government established by
our ancestors, there is none more striking than that whereby they expressed
their intention that the worship of the gods and the vital interests of the state
should be entrusted to the same individuals, to the end that the citizens of the
highest distinction and the brightest fame might achieve the welfare of religion
by a wise administration of the state and of the state by a sage interpretation of
religion.5

The religious affairs of the state were in the hands of the same men who
directed her politics.

The principal religious authority was the Senate. Although often
considered by modern scholars as an entirely political body, the Senate
had a crucial religious role as focus of mediation between men and gods:
it controlled, for example, men’s approaches to the gods, authorizing or
proscribing new forms of cult, and it ordained which of the anomalous
events reported to it each year (rains of blood, for example, or sweating
statues) men should regard as true signs from the gods (prodigia). The

3 Cie, Nat.D. 11.7; Suet. Tib. 2.2.

4 216 B.C.: Livy xxit.57.2-3; 114-113 B.C.: Livy Per. 63; Asc. Mil. 45—Gc. See Cornell 1981 (F 38)
28; Fraschetti 1981 (H 41).

5 Cic. Dom. 1 (trans. Loeb).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CONSTANTS 731

active religious power of the Senate outweighed that of any other body.°®

The priestly groups of Rome must be seen in relation to the Senate, as
repositories not so much of religious power as of religious knowledge
and expertise. In particular the three major colleges of priests, the
pontifices, augures and XV viri sacris faciundis (earlier the decemviri sacris
faciundis), gave advice to the Senate on their respective areas of specialism
—~ the XVviri, for example, being consulted over the recommendations
of the oracular Sibylline books which they had in their care. These and
the other minor groups of priests also fulfilled particular roles in the
ritual of the state — the VIlviri epulonum organizing banquets for the
gods, the Salian priests performing ritual dances through the streets of
Rome in March and October (the beginning and end of the campaigning
season in primitive Rome). Yet despite such specialist roles, most
Roman priests were not full-time professional specialists. They were
male members of the Roman elite, who held priestly office (usually for
life, after entry into the priesthood) alongside a series of magistracies.
Amongst the few exceptions to this rule, most notable were the (female)
Vestal Virgins and the flamen Dialis, a priest of Jupiter of ancient
foundation, whose life was bounded with such strict taboos (a prohibi-
tion, for example, against being away from his bed for more than three
consecutive nights) that political office was in practice impossible. But
even some holders of the office of flamen Dialis tried to assert their right
also to a political career, or, at least, their traditional (but often
forgotten) privilege of a seat in the Senate; so strong was the assumption
that the public life of a Roman aristocrat had both a political and a
religious dimension.’

The religious sphere at Rome cannot easily be distinguished from the
political; the overlap between the two areas went far beyond the overlap
of personnel and the simple identity of priests and politicians. Political
action was, by and large, physically located in a religious context. Not
only did the Senate always meet in a temp/um — that is, a piece of
‘augurated ground’, specially marked out as in direct relationship with
the gods; but in public meetings in the Forum, the magistrate addressed
the people from a platform (the rostra) also defined as a templum. In
addressing the Roman citizens, in urging this or that course of political
action, the magistrate was operating within publicly defined religious
space.8

6 Beard 1989 (H 10).

7 For priesthoods in general, see Beard 1989 (H 10); Gordon 1989 (H 50); Scheid 1984 (F 139);
Szemler 1972 (F 154) 21-46. Sibylline books: below p. 764. Prohibitions surrounding the flamen
Dialis: Gell. NA x.15. Seat in the Senate: C. Valerius Flaccus in 209 8.c. (Livy xxvu1.8.7-10), who
later held both the aedileship and the praetorship (Livy xxx1.50.7; XXXIX 45.2 and 4).

8 The rostra explicitly called semplum, Cic. In Vatininm 18; 24; Sest. 75; Livy vurt.14.12. For the
complicated process of creating a templum and for the different kinds of semp/um, Linderski 1986 (F
101) 2256-96.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

732 19. RELIGION

The political focus of Roman religion did not exclude individual
devotion or private cult in the context of the home, the family or social
peers. In fact, it is a common feature of polytheistic religious systems,
such as Rome’s, that they allow particular devotion by individuals or
groups — women, soldiers, slaves, paupers — to particular cults or deities;
for privileged attention to one part of the system or one aspect of the
religious range is not perceived as a rejection of the whole system within
which such choices are possible. So, for example, there is considerable
evidence for private worship in the terracotta models of parts of the
human body (hands, feet, eyes and so forth) discovered in great numbers
in excavations at Rome and in Italian countryside shrines — votives once
offered, we must assume, by the sick to god or goddess in the hope of
cure;? the houses of Pompeii, likewise, show us the material traces of
family shrines to the household gods (/araria);!° while in Rome itself,
literary sources clearly attest the particular popularity of, say, the cult of
Ceres among the lower social orders of the city.!! The importance of
such devotions necessarily varied from individual to individual: for
some, maybe, a personal commitment to one particular deity might have
amounted to an implicit rejection of the official pantheon; for others it
was, no doubt, just one form of worship among many. Overall, for most
of our period, there is little evidence that the existence of such choices
within the religious system threatened the efficacy of the system’s central
axioms. !2

This profusion of individual and group commitment is important for
our understanding of the full, variegated character of Roman religion; in
particular, its ability to generate all kinds of individual religious
interpretations and, we may guess, to fulfil all kinds of individual
religious needs. But its significance for our understanding of the central
focus of the Roman religious system must not be exaggerated. Two
principal factors should be borne in mind. First, Roman religion, as a
system, was ideologically committed to the public, not the private,
sphere; wherever possible, what we regard as the most private forms of
devotion were drawn into the public domain and were understood as
part of public, social religious observance. This is vividly illustrated by
the Roman practice of making a public display of private sacrifice to the
gods: on the occasion of, at least, the most important private dedications,
the individual went in procession through the city on his way to sacrifice,
preceded by a man holding a placard (titu/us) displaying the reason for

9 See, for example, Mysteries of Diana 1983 (H 89); Pensabene ef a/. 1980 (B 313); Gatti lo Guzzo
1978 (B 293).

10 Boyce 1937 (B 137). For the evidence of private religion from the Italian colony in Delos,
Bulard 1926 (H 21); Bruneau 1970 (H 19) 585-620.

'! Le Bonniec 1938 (H 73) 342-78.

'2 But see below, pp. 761~2, for the perception of such a threat in the case of the Bacchic cult of
the early second century B.c.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE CONSTANTS 733

the sacrifice. Thus what might have been ‘merely’ private devotion
became part of public, city life.'3

The second factor which serves to limit the general significance of
private worship concerns the status of personal belief. The modern
Judaeo-Christian tradition ascribes crucial importance to the personal
commitment of the believer to his or her god; in a world where many
choose to reject religion altogether, it is personal faith that marks out the
religious adherent. This stress on individual belief has led modern
scholars to overestimate the importance of those areas of religious life
where they could imagine personal commitment to be most prominent —
the individual vow and sacrifice or the private shrine. But the religious
world of pagan antiquity was quite different from the modern world of
doubt and uncertainty. For all but a very few at Rome, towards the very
end of our period, the gods — and the ordering of the world which they
represented — simply and self-evidently existed. The individual might
make different choices and develop different interpretations within the
religious system as a whole, but the main axioms that I have outlined
were simply part of ‘how the world was’. It isin that light, not in terms of
faith and belief, that we must understand those axioms.

The close interrelationship of Roman religion and Roman politics
might suggest that Roman state cult can best be understood in terms of a
modern ‘establishment religion’, a religion used, at least in part, to justify
or prop up the established political order. Such a conflation of the
modern and ancient worlds would be seriously mistaken. It is impossible
to overstress that Roman religion is for us an alien religious system. This
alienness goes beyond the simple unfamiliarity of Roman religious
practices, rules and assumptions; it impinges also on our understanding
of the intellectual and social space occupied by ‘religion’ at Rome and its
boundaries with other areas of Roman experience.

In some cases, the unfamiliarity (and even incomprehensibility) of
Roman religious rituals is immediately apparent. In 228, 216 and 114/13
B.c., for example, the Romans practised a form of human sacrifice,
burying alive two Gauls, male and female, and likewise two Greeks. This
ritual is poorly understood. Attempts have been made to link it with the
punishment of unchaste Vestals, to which on two occasions (216 and
114/13 B.C.) it is closely related in time; or again the choice of victims has
suggested a connexion with Rome’s activities in the outside world: But
no consistent pattern of circumstances can be traced through all three
instances nor has any satisfactory link been demonstrated between Gauls
and Greeks, either in Roman perceptions or in Roman military activity.!4

'3 Veyne 1983 (H 131).

4 228: Plut. Marc. 3.3-4. 217: Livy xxit.57.2-6; 114/13: Plut. Quaest. Rom. 83. For different
attempts at interpretation, Cichorius 1922 (H 25); Bémont 1960 (H 12); Fraschetti 1981 (H 40);
Briguel 1981 (H 18); Eckstein 1982 (H 37).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

734 19. RELIGION

The ritual remains most of all a clear indication of the foreignness of a
system that modern writing has often too closely assimilated to the
familiar, while at the same time throwing light on Roman reactions toa
practice that seemed alien even to some Romans themselves. Livy, for
example, in describing the burials of 216, defined them as ‘minime
Romano sacro’ — ‘an entirely un-Roman ritual’.!5 This is no certain
indication of a (literal) foreign origin for the practice, but rather a sign
that the boundaries of what was properly ‘Roman’ in religion were
negotiable.

The more fundamental cultural alienness of Roman religion lies in the
degree to which it was undifferentiated from the political sphere. In
modern world religions there is frequently considerable influence, in
both directions, between religion and politics; but they remain separable
and usually separate (if interacting) spheres of activity. In Rome, by
contrast, we are not simply dealing with a close interaction between
religion and politics; religion, as in many traditional societies, was a
deeply embedded element within public life, hardly differentiated as a
separate sphere of activity or intellectual interest until the very end of the
Republic. This lack of differentiation presents a terminological and
conceptual problem for modern analysis. By using our own language we
necessarily (and often awkwardly) translate Roman cultural forms into
our own terms; we make modern sense of ancient religion at the cost of
blurring or redefining ancient categories. We talk, for example, of the
Senate being a body with both religious and political responsibilities; for
a Roman of the Republic, the Senate would have evoked a complex
amalgam of associations, of which both politics and religion (in our
terms) would have been a part. These translations are, of course,
inevitable; but they demand explicit recognition.

Il. SOURCES OF EVIDENCE AND THE PROBLEMS OF
COMPARISON

Roman religion in the late Republic must be understood against the
background of the long-established religious traditions of the city of
Rome; but within that traditional context those elements must be
identified which form the distinctive religious character of the period.
Problems of evidence and of comparison between one period and
another make this programme more difficult than it might at first sight
appear. On the one hand, the stark differences between the quality and
quantity of surviving evidence for religion in the Ciceronian age and that
for periods both earlier and later confound easy analysis; there is, in fact,

'S Livy xxut.57.6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 735

a common tendency to overestimate the distinctiveness (and particularly
the disruption) of religion in the late Republic, simply because the source
material for the Ciceronian age is so different from that of the immedi-
ately adjacent periods. On the other hand, demonstrations of apparent
continuity in the religion of the late Republic can also be misleading; for
it cannot be assumed, simply because religious practices were maintained
from earlier periods, that they were maintained with the same symbolic
force and with the same significance in the religious system as a whole.
Both these problems may be clarified by a brief consideration of the
general character of the surviving evidence for religion from the middle
Republic to the Augustan period and by the analysis of one particularly
disputed example of continuity — the foundation and restoration of
temples in the first century B.c.

The age of Cicero is the first period of Roman history in which it is
possible to analyse the operation of religion from relatively abundant
contemporary literature — largely the writings of Cicero himself, but also
the works of Sallust, Caesar, late Republican poets and the surviving
portions of Varro’s encyclopaedic output. For all earlier periods a
modern historical account must rely largely on Livy and other Roman
historians of later centuries, who offer a retrospective view of the earlier
stages (including the religious developments) of their city’s history.
Whether ‘accurate’ or not on the details of religious history, these later
Roman writers necessarily present a perspective very different from
Cicero and his contemporaries. Livy, for example, with the benefit of
hindsight, orders and structures the course of events, which to a
contemporary observer might well have appeared unpredictable and
even chaotic. The choice of priests, the reporting of prodigies and the
actions taken in their expiation take their place within the regular
annalistic framework of Livy’s history; while religious crises such as the
suppression of the Bacchanalia in 186 B.c.!6 are described from the
vantage-point of one who knows their outcome and has already assessed
their importance. The contrast with the evidence of Cicero, in particular,
is striking. Cicero is the contemporary observer, for whom the regulari-
ties of religious and political life are barely remarkable; his interest lies in
religious anomaly or crisis, as lived through, undigested and unreflected,
of immediate preoccupying importance, though maybe of little long-
term significance. The image of late Republican religion gained from this
material is one of fluidity and disorganization, if not chaos; but only at
the risk of gross oversimplification can that image be directly compared
with the retrospective view of Livy on the early and middle Republic.

Difficulties remain, even when late Republican evidence can be

'6 Below, pp. 761-2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

736 19. RELIGION

compared with strictly contemporary material from periods both earlier
and later; for any straightforward comparison is marred not only by
differences in the quantity of contemporary evidence between one period
and the next, but also by important differences in the character of that
contemporary evidence. This is clearly true of the inadequately docu-
mented middle Republic, where the Graeco-Roman fantasy world of
Plautus and Terence presents obvious (but still unfathomable) difficul-
ties for any study of explicitly ‘Roman’ religion; but also, almost equally
so, of the triumviral and Augustan ages. Despite their abundance, none
of the Augustan sources includes anything like the day-to-day reportage
found in Cicero. Those most concerned with religion (parts of Augus-
tus’ Res Gestae, for example, or some of the Odes of Horace) offer a self-
conscious, and sometimes propagandist, statement of the piety of the age
~ a piety that, within the traditional axioms of Roman religion, was
necessarily seen to go hand in hand with the Augustan political and
religious restoration. Just as in Livy’s retrospective view of early Roman
history (also written from an Augustan standpoint), the concerns of the
moment, the uncertainties, the contested decisions, so prominent in the
main late Republican source, are invisible.

The case of the foundation and repair of temples in the city of Rome
provides a clear instance of the difficulties of setting the religious
character of the late Republic against that of other periods. At first sight,
care and concern for the religious buildings of the city during the last
decades of the Republic compare unfavourably with that demonstrated
both earlier and later. On the one hand, the regular series of temple
building and dedications documented up to the middle of the second
century B.C. through the surviving text of Livy is absent from the record
of the first half of the first century B.c. The writing of Cicero, for
example, includes mention of only the occasional temple repair or of
particular crises in temple upkeep, such as Verres’ supposedly fraudulent
restoration of the temple of Castor or the accidental destruction of the
temple of the Nymphs in riots in 57.!7 On the other hand, several classic
passages of Augustan literature lay stress not only on the new founda-
tions and restoration of temples under Augustus (according to the Res
Gestae, eighty-two temples were restored in Augustus’ sixth consulship),
but also on the neglect of the previous generation that made that
restoration necessary: ‘You will expiate the sins of your ancestors,
though you do not deserve to, citizen of Rome, until you have rebuilt the
temples and the ruined shrines of the gods and the images fouled with
black smoke.’!8

It is easy to understand how, on the basis of this material, the late

" Cic. u Verr. 1.129-154; Mil. 73; Paradoxa Stoicorum 31.

'8 Hor. Odes 111.6.1-4 (trans. Gordon Williams); Augustus, Res Gestae 20.4. See further Price,
CAH x2, ch. 16.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

SOURCES OF EVIDENCE 737

Republic came to be seen by modern scholars as a low point in the history
of respect and care for the religious buildings of the city of Rome and, at
the same time, a low point in the history of Roman religious observance
in general; but closer examination of the evidence shows how misleading
that view is. The testimony of Livy, with its regular inclusion of temple
foundations, is not directly comparable with the Ciceronian evidence for
the first century B.c., where temple building and repairs intrude only
when they are out of the ordinary or in some way relevant to Cicero’s
immediate oratorical purpose.!9 Likewise, the parade of piety in Augus-
tan literature — with its obvious exaggerations and its strategic construc-
tion of a convenient foil in the supposed impiety of the late Republican
era — cannot be taken as reliable evidence for the religious climate of the
Ciceronian age. In fact, a full survey of the scattered references in
contemporary and later writers to temple construction in the middle of
the first century B.c., together with the archaeological evidence for the
period, offers a picture quite different from the conventional one: while
temples, like the other buildings of the city, suffered in the violence and
unrest of the late Republic, they continued to be newly founded and to be
repaired after damage by human hand or the forces of nature.

Particularly important were the first-century foundations of Pompey.
A temple of Hercules ((Pompeianus’) and one of Minerva are associated
with his name, as well as the temple of Venus Victrix in Pompey’s great
building complex on the Campus Martius. The religious significance of
this shrine of Venus has often been undervalued by both modern and
some ancient writers, because of its close association with a ‘secular’
theatre; but, in fact, its plan fits into a tradition of so-called ‘theatre-
temples’, well attested in other areas of Italy. Other leading men also
were associated with new foundations and repairs. A temple of Diana
Planciana (perhaps of the jos B.C.) can probably be linked to the Plancii;
and Cicero himself was engaged in embellishing the temple of Tellus in
548.c. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, too, was restored after a fire in
83 B.c. There is no sign of tardiness in carrying out that work: it was
formally rededicated in 69 B.c. and had already been in a good enough
condition to house some Sibylline oracles in 76 B.c.20

19 Contra Coarelli 1976 (G 41) who assumes that after 70 B.c. (with the start of the Ciceronian
corpus) documentation on building activity is again comparable with the period covered by Livy’s
history.

20 Pompey’s foundations: Pliny FIN xxxiv.8.57; Vite. De Arch. 11.3.5; Pliny FIN vit.26.97; Gell.
NA x.1.6-7; Pliny HN vitt.7.20; Tert. De Spect. x.5~6; see also Hanson 1959 (H $6). Diana
Planciana: Panciera 1970/1 (B 215) arguing for a foundation in the 50s B.c., questioned by C.P. Jones
1976 (H 66). Jupiter Capitolinus: Lag/i xvit.126-q8 — esp. Livy Per. xcvitt and Lactant. De Ira 22.6;
there is no reason to suppose, with Nock, CAH x', 468, that the dispute about the temple’s
restoration and upkeep in 62 — Suet. Iu/. 15 — implies that the repairs were still unfinished. Tellus:
Cic.:OFr. 111.1.14. For archaeological evidence of restoration, see temple A of the Largo Argentina
(temple of Juturna), considerably refaced in the middle years of the first century B.c.: Coarelli ef a/.
1981 (B 274) 16-18 (early 50s to the third quarter of the first century B.c.); Jacopi 1968/9 (B 297).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

738 19. RELIGION

It must remain uncertain, however, how far this continuity in the
foundation and repair of the fabric of the religious buildings of Rome
reflects a continuity of religious attitude. We cannot know what Romans
‘felt’ at any period when they decided to use their wealth to erect a temple
toa particular deity; far less how they felt when entering, walking past or
simply gazing upon the religious buildings of their city. But it seems
inconceivable in the rapidly changing world of the late Republic, in the
‘political’ upheavals affecting the city, that the symbolic significance of
the ‘religious’ environment of Rome (whatever its physical continuity)
should have remained the same. A comparison with the changes in
ideology underlying one apparently conservative Roman ritual well
illustrates the possible degree of discontinuity. The festival of the Parilia,
held in April each year, was, as far as we know, celebrated in broadly the
same way throughout the Republic — with its prayers to the obscure deity
Pales and its bonfires through which the participants in the festival are
said to have leapt.2! By contrast, its principal religious ‘meaning’
changed markedly. What seems in the early history of Rome to have been
a festival primarily concerned with the well-being of the community’s
flocks, came in the urban society of the late Republic to be associated
(equally, if not more so) with a celebration of the birthday of the city of
Rome and, under Caesar, with the celebrations in commemoration of his
victory at Munda.?2 Superficial continuity (whether in the conservatism
of ritual forms or a maintained commitment to the upkeep of temples)
can mask deep differences and developments of religious ideology in a
changing world.

This chapter aims to determine, as far as possible, the particular
characteristics of Roman religion between 146 and 4q B.c. and set them
against the long-established traditional religious rules of Rome. It is not
intended as a narrative history of religious events of the period, nor as a
full coverage of the religious traditions in Rome’s expanding territory in
Italy and overseas, but as an exploration of the elements of continuity
and change that together formed the distinctive pattern of religion in the
late Republic. This exploration involves more than delineating a simple
spectrum between the poles of ‘continuity’ and ‘change’. It involves also
an understanding of how continuity of religious attitude was, paradoxi-
cally, upheld by adaptations and changes in religious form and, conver-
sely, how conservative and superficially unchanging religious practices
could incorporate in time significant developments in underlying ideol-
ogy and evocation. The major theme of the chapter is the active and
complex interrelationship between the elements of continuity and
change.

21 Ov. Fast. 1v.735—-82.
22 Beard 1987 (9); Price, CAH x?, ch. 16.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS DISRUPTION 739

III, POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS DISRUPTION

The disruption of political and social life at Rome in the late Republic
necessarily brought with it the disruption of religion. In a society in
which religion was deeply embedded in public life as a whole, changes
and upheavals in the political sphere could not help affecting the
religious sphere also. These effects took many forms; but the most
marked and controversial disturbances occurred when the unprece-
dented developments of political life in the late Republic threw up
problems for which the traditional religious rules had no answer. This is
illustrated by the events of 59 B.c., when the consul Bibulus tried to
block his colleague Caesar’s legislation by the declaration of ill omens.

As consul in 59, Caesar introduced in the popular assembly contro-
versial legislation (including the bill for redistribution of Campanian
land), bitterly opposed by his colleague M. Calpurnius Bibulus. At the
beginning of the year, it seems, Bibulus offered religious objection to
Caesar’s proposals in the traditional way, according to the process
known as obnuntiatio:23 he appeared in the Forum and declared to the
presiding magistrate that he had seen evil omens, preventing the
progress of legislation. As the year went on, however, civil disturbances
increased and Bibulus became the object of such violent assaults that he
took refuge in his house and merely issued messages that he was
watching the sky for omens. The assemblies went ahead despite such
objections and the legislation was passed: it was later attacked on the
ground that it flouted religious law, but was never repealed.”4

This incident has been seen as an illustration of the ruleless chaos into
which the traditional religious system had fallen by the first century B.c.:
the absolute domination of religious concerns by factional political
interests; blatant disregard for religious obligations where they con-
flicted with secular ambitions; heedless flouting of religious rules once
taken seriously. Attractive at first sight, such an interpretation is,
however, a serious oversimplification, for underlying the story, and
others like it, can be seen continuing attempts to apply the traditional
religious rules, but in a situation of unprecedented problems, for which
the rules provided no self-evident solution.

The force of Bibulus’ objections to Caesar’s legislation was problema-
tic because it raised new issues of interpretation, unparalleled in earlier

23 The assumption is supported by a rather muddled passage of Suetonius (Iu/. 20.1). For debate
on the laws regulating the practice of obnuntiatio (Leges Aelia et Fufia) and Clodius’ reform of them
in 58 B.c., see Weinstock 1937 (F 170); Balsdon 1957 (F 13); Sumner 1963 (F 152); Astin 1964 (F 7);
Weinrib 1970 (H 133); Mitchell 1986 (11 83).

24 Cic, Aff. 1.16.2; 19.2; 20.4; 21.3-5 with Taylor 1951 (c 277) and Shackleton Bailey 1965 (c
261). Attacks on the religious status of the legislation, Cic. Dom. 39-41; Har. Resp. 48; Prov.Cons. 45—
6. See also Wiseman in ch. 10 above pp. 369-71.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

740 19. RELIGION

religious practice. He claimed through much of his consulship to be
watching the heavens, but did not carry out the correct procedure for the
declaration of ill omens. His actions could be understood in two ways.
On the one hand, it might be (and no doubt was) argued that, once
Bibulus had incarcerated himself at home and simply gave notice of
‘watching the sky’ by message, his objections had no validity; for ill
omens constituted proper obstruction to political business only if
announced in person at the assembly concerned.?5 On the other hand, it
could be claimed that, since violence made it impossible for Bibulus to
attend the assemblies and since there must have been some religious force
in his objections, even if they were not procedurally correct in every
detail, his watching of the heavens should have nullified Caesar’s
legislation.*6 Resolution of these two opposing views was not easy. The
established conventions of religious practice in this area had taken shape
over a period when the prolonged urban violence of the late Republic
could not have been foreseen; and, particularly within the atmosphere of
disunity and conflict among the governing elite, it was difficult to reach
agreement on how the conventions should be applied in this case. There
is no suggestion in our surviving sources that the potential religious
import of Bibulus’ actions was ignored; on the contrary, precisely
because of the religious uncertainty, the validity of Caesar’s legislation
proved controversial. The disruption of the religious system lay in the
impossibility of that uncertainty being resolved according to the
traditional rules in unprecedented circumstances.

Other incidents in the late Republic reveal similar problems; disrup-
tion often stemmed from difficulties in applying the traditional religious
rules. This was clearly the case in 62-61 B.c. in the cause célébre which
followed the invasion of the ceremonies of the Bona Dea, traditionally
restricted to women, by a man believed to have been P. Clodius Pulcher
(tribune 58 B.c.). The sacrilege was followed by the apparently correct
action of the Senate in asking the appropriate priestly college to
investigate the sacrilege and then instructing the consuls to frame a bill
to institute a formal trial. Yet it is also clear that the religious system was
under stress. This stress is evident not so much in the act of sacrilege
itself (for, no doubt, there had always been such isolated, high-spirited
attacks on the sober conventions of religion), nor in the eventual
acquittal of Clodius (for, despite the effusions of Cicero, who attributed
the outcome to the graft and corruption of Clodius’ friends, we cannot in

25 Linderski 1965 (F 100) 425-6; Lintott 1968 (A 62) 144-5. Mitchell 1986 (1 83) while broadly
working along the same lines, suggests that it was only after Clodius’ legislation of 58 B.c. that
personal announcement of ill omens became an explicit requirement.

26 ven some who accepted the contents of Caesar’s legislation felt that it should be resubmitted
with proper observance of the auspices. Cic. Prov.Cons. 46.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS DISRUPTION 741

fact be certain that the young man was guilty); but rather in the problems
that arose in formulating the details of the judicial action — the
disagreements not only as to whether there should be a formal trial at all,
but also, later, as to the precise composition of the jury.2” There was, we
may deduce, no established procedure for dealing with this particular
religious crime. As in the case of Bibulus’ attempted religious obstruc-
tion, in a situation where the governing elite were deeply divided, when
there was no clearly defined pattern of action to follow, it proved hard to
find consensus on the correct establishment and implementation of a
new procedure.

The disruption of religion in the late Republic should not, however,
be overemphasized. It is important to recognize how religion was
necessarily implicated in the general disturbances and changes in Roman
public life during the period; but, at the same time, it should not be
assumed that all aspects of what appear to modern observers as religious
manipulation, abuse or disregard are symptoms of a particular decline,
rather than entirely traditional elements in the religious life of Rome.
The handling of oracles is a case in point. In 56 B.c., for example, a
Sibylline oracle was produced which stated that no army should be used
to restore the king of Egypt — an apposite intervention in the political
battles of the time, when several prominent politicians were competing
to lead an expedition to restore to the throne the deposed Ptolemy
Auletes. Cicero had no doubt that the oracle was a blatant forgery (/ieta
religio), invented to prevent Pompey obtaining a further major military
command.?8 It might seem easy to conclude that fraudulence of this kind
was another distinctive part of the disruption of religion in the late
Republic; in fact, this conclusion would be mistaken. Although we
possess no reliable information on the frequency of oracular fraud in the
earlier history of Rome, comparative studies of other traditional reli-
gions show that such fabrication is almost universal in oracular systems.
Wherever oracles form a major element in a religious system, forgery
and accusations of forgery are also regularly present; they are not
indications that the system is failing.29 So it is ethnocentric of the modern
observer to suppose that such practices prove the failure or disruption of
religion at any period of Rome’s history. The dividing line between

27 See especially Cic. Aft. 1.13.3; 14.1-$; 16.1-6. Such legal problems have led many modern
scholars to treat the issue as simply ‘political’: Moreau 1982 (c 230); Latte 1960 (A 60) 285. See
Wiseman in ch. 9 above, pp. 361-3.

28 Cic. Fam. 1.4.2. But Pompey was probably not the sole target of the oracle; see Fenestella Fr. 21
(HRR), who claims that C. Cato (who produced the oracle) was also raising opposition to Lentulus
Spinther, proconsul of Cilicia, and so also anxious to intervene. In general, Cic. Favs. 1.1-7.

29 See, for example, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande
(Oxford, 1937) 359-74.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

742 19. RELIGION

‘proper’ and ‘improper’ religious conduct and usage varies from society
to society. One culture’s ‘abuses’ are another culture’s ‘traditions’.

IV. NEGLECT AND ADAPTATION

A prominent feature of religion in the late Republic is the dying out of
certain traditional religious practices and the apparent neglect of
elements of cult once central to the religious system. This aspect of the
period is often stressed by modern writers, who have sometimes (as in
the case of the alleged neglect of the city’s temples) been too ready to see
the age of Cicero as the nadir of Roman religious piety. But ancient
authors also commented on the lapse of particular pieces of religious
observance. Cicero himself, for example, lamented the decline of augural
skill in his own day; while other authors noted that from 87 B.c. for
almost seventy years the ancient priesthood of Jupiter (the office of the
flamen Dialis) was left unfilled.3°

Neglect is a multifaceted phenomenon and the nostalgia of ancient
writers hard to assess. Some laments for past piety were tendentious — it
being as tempting in the ancient world as in the modern to assume
without much justification that one’s forebears behaved more scrupu-
lously than oneself. Other laments, however, reflect real changes in
religious practice, which (at their most acute) may be related, once again,
to the unsettled conditions of public life in general. Disturbances in the
city created a situation in which it was impossible to do what had always
previously been done.

The non-appointment of the flamen Dialis throughout the last forty
years of the Republic, and beyond, provides a clear instance of neglect
stemming from disturbance. Various factors were no doubt involved in
this lapse. In part, for example, it may have resulted from a new-found,
or increased, unwillingness amongst the Roman elite to countenance the
burdensome taboos of that particular office. But the confusion of the
Sullan period was, at the very least, an important catalyst to the
suspension of the priesthood. During the dominance of Cinna and
Marius, in 87 or early 86 B.c., the young Julius Caesar was designated as
flamen Dialis, in succession to L. Cornelius Merula, who had committed
suicide after the Marian take-over of the city. But before Caesar had been
formally inaugurated into the office, Rome had fallen once more to Sulla,
who annulled all the enactments and appointments made by his
enemies.*! It is impossible now to reconstruct how the Roman elite
would have viewed the vacant flaminate or Caesar’s status in relation to

30 Augury: Cic. Leg. 11.33; Div. 1.25 (speaking in the character of Quintus Cicero); Naf.D. 11.9 (in
the character of Balbus). F/amen Dialis: Tac. Ann. 111.58; Dio Liv.36.1.
3) Taylor 1941 (C 140) 113-16; Leone 1976 (H 76).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

NEGLECT AND ADAPTATION 743

the priestly office that he had arguably already filled. It is clear only that
Sulla’s action in dismissing Caesar, in the confusion of the period of civil
war, represented the first step in the temporary suspension of the
priesthood: the office remained vacant until an appointment was made
by Augustus in 11 B.c., while the rituals associated with it were carried
out over that period by the college of pontifices.>2

Other instances of neglect have a more positive aspect. Roman
religion adapted with changes in social and political life and, in
particular, with Rome’s expansion into empire. It was not, nor could it
be, the same in the late Republic as it had been three or four centuries’
before. New elements were introduced; other elements, as always, died
away. Losses as well as gains were part of Rome’s living and adapting
religion.

The geographical expansion of Roman imperial power underlies
several of the most striking losses and adaptations in the Roman
religious system. Various rituals that originated when Rome was
fighting her neighbours and expanding within the Italian peninsula were
no longer appropriate when Rome’s expansion was far overseas. The
ritual of the Fetial priests on declaration of war is perhaps the clearest
instance of such a change. Traditional Fetial practice was to proceed to
the border of Rome’s territory with her enemy and to hurl into the
enemy land a ritual spear, as first symbolic mark of the coming war.
When Rome’s enemies were no longer her neighbours, however, but
were often hundreds of kilometres away outside Italy, the ritual was
clearly no longer appropriate and was retained only in vestigial form: a
piece of land in Rome itself, near the temple of Bellona, was, by a legal
fiction, designated enemy ground and into that the Fetials cast their
spear.33

A rather more complex change is evident in the ritual of evocatio.
Tradition here was that the Roman commander should press home his
advantage in war by offering to the patron deity of the enemy a better
temple and better worship in Rome, if he or she were to desert their
erstwhile favourites and come over to the Roman side. The best
recorded instance of this practice concerned the goddess Juno, patron of
Veii, who deserted the Veians for the Romans in 396 (thus ensuring
Rome’s victory)* and was thereafter worshipped at Rome with a famous
temple on the Aventine Hill. It has been thought by modern scholars
that this practice (with its apparently crude notions of the bribery of the
deity) died out entirely by the late Republic; for no temples in Rome later

32 Tac. Aan. 111.58 makes it clear that ostensible neglect of the office did not entail neglect of the
rituals associated with it.
33. The precise chronology of the changes, disuse and revivals of the Fetial rituals is unclear. See

Rich 1976 (A 95) 56-8; 106; 127.
4 Livy v.21.2~-4 (with a version of the formula of evocation); 22.4-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

744 19. RELIGION

than that of Vortumnus (founded 264 B.c.) are thought to owe their
origin to the ritual of evocation, and ancient claims that Scipio practised
evocatio at the capture of Carthage in 146 B.c. have been viewed with
scepticism. But an inscription discovered in Asia Minor suggests that the
practice did not die out, for it records the evocation of the patron deity of
Isaura Vetus in 75 B.c. and the erection of a new, Roman, temple for the
god near his old home, in the newly conquered territory.*5 Further
evidence is scanty; but this one inscription makes it plausible enough to
argue that right up to the late Republic new temples continued to be
founded in the Roman provinces as a result of evocation, even if it no
longer happened in Rome itself. The logic underlying this adaptation is
fairly clear. Whereas in the early Republic offering a rival deity a Roman
home meant precisely offering a temple in the city of Rome itself, by at
least the second century B.c., the geographical definition of what was
‘Roman’ had so expanded that the enemy deity could quite properly be
offered a home in Roman territory outside Rome. What appears from the
perspective of the city of Rome to be the dying out of a practice is thus
better understood as a change in its geographical location.

Ancient regrets about the disuse of the auspices can also be related to
Rome’s imperial development — at least in the case of the so-called
‘military auspices’, the formal confirmation by the general before
engagement of battle that the gods were favourable to the Roman cause.
In the early and middle Republic, when Rome’s wars were fought nearby
and the internal government of the city was a relatively light burden,
military commanders were normally magistrates campaigning during
their year of office. As magistrates, they fought ‘under their own
auspices’ and so had the right to determine the will of the gods on behalf
of the Roman people. By the late Republic, when the government of the
city had become more complex and time consuming and, by and large,
Rome’s wars were many months distant, the major magistrates remained
at home for at least part of their year of office and often undertook
military commands later, as promagistrates. In so far as they were not
then, in the strictest sense, magistrates and had no official right to consult
the gods on Rome’s behalf, they could not, as previously, take the
military auspices before battle.3¢ In this case, the apparent neglect of a
religious practice in fact stems from a continuing scrupulous regard for
the traditional religious rules.

Several traditional religious practices lapsed during the period of the late
Republic. The causes of those lapses varied, as did also contemporary
perceptions of their significance. Some people were no doubt

35 Hall 1972 (B 168); Le Gall 1976 (H 74); for Carthage the evidence is reviewed by Rawson 1973
(H 105) 168-72. % This point is made by Cicero himself, Div. 11.76-7.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE RELIGION OF THE POPULARES 745

wantonly indifferent; others, rigidly traditional, lamented any change.
For the modern observer two, rather different, aspects of the lapses are
important: neglect of religious practice was certainly in part a conse-
quence of the confusion and disturbance of the late Republic; but it was
also part of the necessary process by which the religious system adapted
to the changing circumstances of the community within which it was
embedded. The process of losses and gains had always been so, and, until
the end of paganism, always would be. Paradoxically some neglect was
traditional, being essential for the continuance of a religion which could
still make sense within a changed society.

V. COMPETITION, OPPOSITION AND THE RELIGION OF THE
POPULARES

As part of Roman public life, religion had always been a part of the
political struggles and disagreements in the city. Disputes that were, in
our terms, concerned with political power and control, were in Rome
necessarily associated with rival claims to religious expertise and to
privileged access to the gods. That, at least, was the view of the Romans
themselves, who perceived the political struggles of the early Republic
partly in terms of struggles against patrician monopoly of religious
knowledge and of access to the divine. Livy, for example, gives a vivid
account of the passing of the Lex Ogulnia in 300 B.c., the last major event
in the so-called ‘Struggle of the Orders’, which gave the plebeians the
right finally to hold places in the pontifical and augural colleges. The
patricians, according to Livy, saw such a law as a contamination of
religious rites and so liable to bring disaster on the state; the plebeians
regarded it as the necessary culmination of the inroads they had already
made into magisterial and military office-holding.*” Full political invol-
vement in the governing of Rome demanded also full involvement in
man’s relations with the gods. It would make no sense in Roman terms to
claim rights to political power without also claiming rights to religious
authority and expertise.

The struggles of the late Republic and the ever-intensifying compe-
tition between both individuals and groups provide even clearer
testimony of the inevitable religious dimension within political contro-
versy at Rome. Not only were individual political arguments (on
particular decisions or the particular conduct of leading public figures)
often framed in terms of the will of the gods or of divine approval
manifest for this or that course of action; but also, as political debate
became (at least in part) ranged around the opposition between optimates

37 Livy x.6.1~9.2.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

746 19. RELIGION

and populares, so there were, from the side of the populares, increasing
attacks on what seemed the optimate stranglehold on priestly office and
attempts to locate religious, along with political, power in the hands of
the people as a whole. Sallust, for example, puts into the mouth of C.
Memmius (trib. 111 B.C.) a virulent attack on the dominance of the
nobles, who ‘walk in grandeur before the eyes [of the people], some
flaunting their priesthoods and consulships, others their triumphs, just
as if these were honours and not stolen goods’.38 The juxtaposition of
priesthoods and consulships here is not fortuitous. Those who resented
what they saw as the illicit monopoly of power by a narrow group of
nobles would necessarily assert the people’s right of control over both
religious and political office, over dealings with the gods as well as with
men.

A clear instance of the successful assertion of popular control over
religion is found in the legislation governing the choice of priests for the
major priestly colleges, especially the Lex Domitia of 104 B.c. The
traditional means of recruitment to most of the colleges was co-option:
on the death of a serving priest his colleagues in the college themselves
selected a replacement. This process was first formally challenged (as far
as we know) in 145 B.c., when C. Licinius Crassus introduced a bill to
transfer the selection to a system of popular election. The bill was
defeated, but a similar proposal introduced in 104 by Cn. Domitius
Ahenobarbus (cos. 96) succeeded: the priests of the four major colleges
(pontifices, augures, XVviri and VIviri) retained the right to nominate
candidates for their priesthoods, but the choice between the candidates
nominated was put into the hands of a special popular assembly, formed
out of seventeen of the thirty-five Roman voting tribes — a method of
election used since the third century for the choice of the pontifex
maximus. The priests themselves no longer had complete control of
membership of their colleges.*°

The surviving ancient sources offer various interpretations of this
measure. Suetonius stresses the personal motives of Domitius: having
himself failed to be co-opted into the pontifical college, he proceeded out
of pique to reform the method of entry.*0 We cannot now judge the truth
of such allegations; all kinds of personal and narrowly political motives
may have played a part. We can, however, see how such reforms of
priestly selection fit into a consistent pattern of political and religious
opposition to the dominance of the traditional elite and assertion of

38 Sall. Jug. 31.10.

39 C, Licinius Crassus: Cic. Amic. 96. Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus: Leg. Agr. 11.18-19; Suet. Ner.
2.1.

40 Suet. Ner. 2.1; in a similar vein, Asc. it Seaurian. 21c ascribes Domitius’ prosecution of M.

Aemilius Scaurus for religious negligence to his pique at not being co-opted augur. See Rawson
1974 (H 106); Scheid 1981 (H 112) 124-5; 168—71.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE RELIGION OF THE POPULARES 747

popular control over the full range of state offices. The first proposer of
such legislation, for example, C. Licinius Crassus, was also reported to
have offered a symbolic challenge to the authority of the Senate by being
the first, when speaking on the rostra, to turn to address the people in the
Forum, rather than the elite gathered in the Comitium outside the senate-
house.*! And the later history of the legislation on the selection of priests
confirms its significance as part of wider conflicts at Rome: the Lex
Domitia was repealed by Sulla in his reassertion of traditional senatorial
control, and later re-enacted in 63 B.c. by the tribune Labienus, a well-
known radical and friend of Caesar.42 Support of the popular cause had
come to involve support for popular control of man’s relations with the
gods.

A similar challenge to traditional religious authority is found in the
events of 114-113, when a number of Vestals were declared guilty of
unchastity and put to death. In 114 the daughter of a Roman equestrian
had been struck dead by lightning, while riding on horseback - a
prodigy interpreted by the Etruscan Aaruspices as an indication of a
scandal involving virgins and knights. As a result, in December 114,
according to traditional practice, three Vestal Virgins were tried for
unchastity before the pontifical college, though only one was found
guilty and sentenced to burial alive. In reaction to the acquittal of the
other two Vestals, Sextus Peducaeus, tribune in 113 B.C., carried a bill
through the popular assembly to institute a new trial — this time with
equestrian jurors and a specially appointed prosecutor, the consular L.
Cassius Longinus. The new trial resulted in the conviction and subse-
quent execution of all three Vestals.43 The traditional competence of the
pontifices to preserve correct relations with the gods had been called into
question, while the power of the people themselves to override the
priestly college and control the behaviour of public religious officials had
been asserted.

On other occasions rival claims by individual politicians to privileged
access to the gods provided the focus of political debate; a man could
demonstrate the correctness of his political stance by demonstrating that
he, rather than his political opponent, was acting in accordance with
divine will. This was clearly the case in 56 B.c., when Cicero and Clodius
engaged in public debate on the proper interpretation of a prodigy. A
mysterious rumbling had been heard in territory outside Rome and
haruspices had been called in to interpret the prodigious occurrence. Ina
lengthy response they alluded to the causes of divine anger, of which the
prodigy was a sign: the pollution of games (/udi); the profanation of

41 Cic. Amic. 96. 42 Dio Xxxvul.37.1-2.

43 Seen. 4 above. The implications for popular control of religion are drawn by Rawson 1974 ("1
106) 207-8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

748 19. RELIGION

sacred places; the killing of orators; neglected oaths; ancient and secret
rituals performed improperly.44 Yet much remained unclear and unspe-
cific. In the ensuing debate on the precise significance of the response
both Clodius and Cicero offered further, opposing, explanations: Clo-
dius, in a public meeting, claimed that ‘the profanation of sacred places’
was a reference to Cicero’s destruction of the shrine of Liberty which he,
Clodius, had erected on the site of the orator’s house during his exile;
Cicero, on the other hand, in a speech to the Senate which still survives,
related ‘the pollution of games’ to Clodius’ action in disrupting the
Megalesian Games (held in honour of Cybele) and claimed that the
‘ancient and secret rituals performed improperly’ were the rituals of the
Bona Dea, reputedly invaded by Clodius some years earlier.45 This
debate is more than a simple series of opportunistic appeals to a
conveniently vague haruspical response; more than a crafty exploitation
of religious forms at the (political) expense of a rival. Both Cicero and
Clodius, by claiming as correct their own, admittedly partisan, interpre-
tation of the prodigy, were attempting to establish their own position as
privileged interpreters of the will of the gods. Divine allegiance was
important for the Roman politician. In the turbulent politics of the mid-
50s, it was no doubt increasingly unclear where that allegiance lay.
Connexions with the gods, and the alienation of the divine from one’s
rivals, had to be constantly paraded and reiterated.

A striking consensus of religious ideology underlay these apparently
deep divisions over the control of religion and the access to divine
favour. Both sides in political debate, populares as well as optimates, seem
to have publicly accepted the traditional framework for understanding
the gods’ relations with man. The difference between political rivals lay
rather in their different views of how and by whom access to the gods
was to be controlled. There is no evidence that a radical political stance
ever involved a fundamental challenge to traditional views of the
operation of the divine in the world. There were, to be sure, individual
cults and individual deities that were invested, for various reasons, with
a particular popular resonance. The temple of Ceres, for example, had
from the early Republic special ‘plebeian’ associations: it acted as the
headquarters of plebeian magistrates; it housed a treasury which
received the property of all those convicted of violating the sacrosanctity
of a tribune of the people; it was the centre of distribution of corn to the
poor.46 Likewise the cult of the Lares Compitales at local shrines
throughout the regions (vici) of the city of Rome was a focus of worship
and social life, particularly for the slaves and poor; while Clodius’

“ Cic. Har.Resp., with the ‘reconstructed’ text of the haruspical pronouncement in Wissowa
1912 (H 137) 545, 1. 4.
45 Cic. Har.Resp. 9; 22-9; 37-9. For the exaggeration of Cicero’s claims, Lenaghan 1969 (B 65)

114-17; Wiseman 1974 (Cc 285) 159-69.
46 Le Bonniec 1938 (H 73) 342-78.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POLITICAL DOMINANCE AND DEIFICATION 749

dedication of a shrine to Libertas on the site of Cicero’s house was no
doubt intended to have particular appeal to those who felt that Cicero
and his like seriously restricted the liberty of the people.4’ But these
individual focuses of popular enthusiasm brought with them no radical
rethinking of the overall relations between gods and men. They were
simply a consequence of the availability of a range of individual choices,
as is traditional within polytheistic systems.

The opposition between Clodius and Cicero in the closing years of the
Republic well illustrates the nature of this broad religious consensus.
The battles between the two rivals are, of course, known almost entirely
(whether directly or indirectly) from the side of Cicero, who constantly
characterized Clodius as ‘the enemy of the gods’ — accusing him not only
of sacrilege against the Bona Dea, but also of destruction of the auspices
and the magistrates’ traditional right to obstruct legislation by the
declaration of ill omens (obnuntiatio). The literal truth of such allegations
remains, at the very least, doubtful. More important is the fact that
Clodius appears to have returned in kind what were, after all, quite
traditional accusations of divine disfavour. As is clear from Cicero’s
defence in De Haruspicum Responso, Clodius did not disregard or simply
ridicule Cicero’s religious rhetoric; he did not stand outside the system
and laugh at its conventions. He turned the tables, and within the same
religious framework as his opponent, he claimed the allegiance of the
gods for himself and their enmity for Cicero. It was similar with other
radical politicians: Saturninus, for example, protected his contentious
legislation by demanding an oath of observance (sanctio) sworn by the
central civic deities of Jupiter and the Penates;*8 and Catiline kepta silver
eagle ina shrine in his house, as if taking over for his illegal uprising the
symbolic protection of the eagle traditionally kept in the official shrine of
a legionary camp.*? The basic pattern of the gods’ co-operation with the
political leaders of Rome seems to have been accepted by all; the only
question was: which political leaders?

VI. POLITICAL DOMINANCE AND DEIFICATION: THE DIVINE
STATUS OF CAESAR AND ITS ANTECEDENTS

The honours granted to Julius Caesar immediately before his assassina-
tion and just after suggest that he had attained the status of a god: already

47 See Allen 1944 (c 160); Gallini 1962 (14 45) 267-9. For the popular character of the Compitalia,
the associations surrounding the cults of the local Lares and the relations between those associations
and ‘professional’ co/legia, Accame 1942 (F 1); Lintott 1968 (A 62) 77-83; Flambard 1977 (c 193);
Purcell in ch. 17 above, pp. 674~5.

48 Riccobono, FIRA 1.6.3 (the Lex Latina Tabulae Bantinae); for arguments that it is a law of
Saturninus, see Hinrichs 1970 (B 172) 473-86. Cf. Riccobono, FIRA 1.9, c. 13 and Hassall,
Crawford and Reynolds 1974 (B 170) 205 lines 13-15; 216.

49 Cic. Cat. 1.24. Note the additional symbolic association that this eagle had been one of the
legionary standards on Marius’ campaigns against the Cimbri and Teutones, Sall. Ca.59.3.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

750 19. RELIGION

during his lifetime he had been given the right to have a priest (famen) of
his cult and to display various symbols of divinity (a pediment on his
house, as if it were a temple, and a place for his image in formal
processions of the gods) and from shortly after his death he was endowed
with other marks of divine status — altars, sacrifices, a temple and a
formal decree of deification.5° These honours, particularly those granted
during his lifetime, have been the focus of much debate: what (it has
often been asked) would have been the correct, Roman, answer before
the Ides of March 44 B.c. to the question ‘Is Caesar a god, or is he not?’5!
Unresolved disagreement on this issue, combined with the apparent
ambiguity of the ancient sources, is sufficient to suggest that the question
is inappropriately framed. The important and uncontestable fact is that
before his death Caesar was in various specific aspects assimilated to the
gods.

This assimilation of Caesar to the gods can be understood in different
ways, both asa new, or foreign, element within the political and religious
horizons of the Roman elite, and as one with strong traditional roots in
Roman conceptions of deity and of the relations between political
leaders and the gods. On the one hand, particular inspiration for various
of Caesar’s divine symbols may have been taken from the Greek East and
the cult of the Hellenistic kings. It is certainly the case, for example, that
the public celebrations of Caesar’s birthday and the renaming of a
calendar month and a voting tribe in his honour had clear precedents in
the honours paid to certain Hellenistic monarchs.52 On the other hand,
some aspects of Caesar’s divine status are comprehensible as the
development of existing trends within traditional Roman thought and
practice. The boundary between gods and men was never as rigidly
defined in Roman paganism as in the modern Judaeo-Christian tradition:
Roman mythology could incorporate men, such as Romulus, who
became gods; the Roman ritual of triumph involved the impersonation
of a god by the successful general; in the Roman cult of the dead, past
members of the community (or of the individual family) shared in some
degree of divinity. There was no simple polarity, but a continuous
spectrum, between the human and the divine.53 Throughout the late

50 Cic. PAil, 11.110; Suet. Iu/. 76.1; Dio XLvi1.18-19.

51 The classic study is Weinstock 1971 (4 134) (with North 1975 (# 92)). See also, with different
answers to the questions, Taylor 1931 (4 124) 58-77; Adcock 1932 (c 152) 718-35; Vogt 1953 (H
132); Taeger 1960 (# 121) 11, 3-88; Ehrenberg 1964 (C 192); Gesche 1968 (H 47). Full bibliography:
Dobesch 1966 (c 190).

52 Dio xutv.4.4 (with Weinstock 1971 (H 134) 206-9); XLIV.5.2 (with Weinstock 152-62).

53 For the traditions of Romulus and Caesar’s assimilation of them, Weinstock 1971 (H 134) 175-
99; the triumph: Weinstock 60~79 (and n. 54, below). Some have seen also the traditions of
Etruscan—Roman kingship in the honours paid to Caesar; for example, Kraft 195 2/3 (c 215). Fora
different approach to ‘Latin’ traditions of deification, see Schilling 1980 (H 115).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POLITICAL DOMINANCE AND DEIFICATION 751

Republic, the status of the successful politician veered increasingly
towards the divine. Caesar represented only the culmination of this
trend.

Rome’s political and military leaders had always enjoyed close
relations with the gods. The underlying logic of much of the political
display and debate discussed in earlier sections of this chapter was that
magistrates and gods worked in co-operation to ensure the well-being of
Rome; that the success of the state depended on the common purpose of
its human and divine leaders. The logic could also be reversed: successful
action, whether political or military, necessarily brought men into close
association with the divine. This association was most clearly apparent in
the traditional ceremony of triumph, when the successful general
processed through the city to offer thanks on the Capitol, dressed in the
garb of Jupiter Optimus Maximus: his face was painted red, just like the
cult statue of the god; he wore the god’s purple cloak and crown, and
carried his golden sceptre. The general’s victories had been won through
his co-operation with the gods and, in celebration of these victories, just
for a day he stepped into a god’s shoes.*4

Changes in the pattern of political office-holding, however, brought
changes in patterns of association with the gods. The essentially
temporary identification of man and god implied by the triumphal
ceremony was appropriate to the likewise temporary periods of formal
political power enjoyed by the elite in the early and middle Republic. The
duration of office-holding was limited and so too was the potential for
any long-term association with the divine. The late Republic, by
contrast, set a new pattern of political dominance. As the great dynasts of
the age increasingly managed, by the repetition and extension of offices
and by series of special commands, to exercise power for long periods, in
some cases almost continuously, so they came to claim long-term
association or identification with the gods. Sometimes adopting the
symbolism of the triumph, sometimes using other marks of proximity to
the divine, they displayed themselves, or were treated by others, as
favourites of the gods, in part gods themselves. In a world where
political action was conceived in terms of the action of both gods and
men, and where the boundaries between the human and divine sphere
were in any case not rigidly defined, this development is not hard to
understand.

Already by the late third or early second century B.c. there are clear
signs of the divine elevation of powerful political and military figures.
Scipio Africanus, for example, displayed close connexions with the gods.
The legend of his divine origin, as son of Jupiter, was no doubt inflated

54 Versnel 1970 (H 130) who demonstrates both divine and regal associations in the traditional
ceremony.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

752 19. RELIGION

after his death; but it seems certain that during his lifetime he made a
point of parading his association with Jupiter, letting it be known that he
communicated privately with the god in his Capitoline temple before
taking any important new action.® A little later Aemilius Paullus, after
his victory at Pydna in 168, was granted not only a triumph, but the right
to wear triumphal dress at all Circus games.5¢ That was an important
symbolic break with the very temporary honorific status conferred by
the traditional triumphal ceremony: Paullus, appearing at games in the
dress of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, was allowed to extend, even to
regularize, his identification with the god. It was to bean honour granted
again to Pompey in 63 B.c. and later, with even further extensions, to
Caesar: the dictator was allowed to wear such costume on all public
occasions.»

The leading figures of the post-Gracchan era paraded, or were
popularly invested with, even clearer marks of assimilation with the
gods. The political dominance of Marius, for example, seven times
consul and triumphant victor over Jugurtha and over the Germans, was
matched by his religious elevation. Not only did he go so far as to enter
the Senate in his triumphal dress — a display of religious and political
dominance amongst his peers from which he was forced to draw back;
but after his victory over the northern invaders he was promised by the
grateful people offerings of food and libations of wine along with the
gods (hama tois theois).58 Such a — no doubt temporary and informal —
outburst of popular suppore for a favoured political leader was not
unprecedented; the Gracchi had received some kind of cult after their
death at the places where they had been killed.5° But Marius seems to
have set a pattern for the cult of the living. Twenty years later the praetor
Marius Gratidianus issued an immensely popular edict reasserting the
traditional value of the Roman denarius and was rewarded by the people
with ‘statues erected in every street, before which incense and candles
were burned’. It is significant that Cicero connects Gratidianus’ eleva-
tion by the people with his independent action in issuing the edict in his
own name, without reference to his colleagues.® Divine status, it seems,
went hand in hand with political dominance, or claims to such
dominance.

Association with the gods could also be displayed through connex-
ions with individual deities other than the triumphal Jupiter. Venus, in
particular, ancestor of the family of Aeneas (and so, by extension, of the

55 See Walbank 1967 (B 122). 56 De Vir. Til. 56.5.

57 Pompey: Dio xxxvii.21.4; Vell. Pat. 1.40.4 (stating that he only used the honour once); Cic.
Att. 1.18.6. Caesar: Dio xuitt.43.1; App. BCiv. 1.106.442.

58 Plut. Mar. 27.9; Val. Max. vitt.15.7. 59 Plut. C. Gracch. 18.2.

© Cic. Of. 11.80, with Pliny HN xxxut.132 (who connects the honours simply with the
popularity of the measure); Seager in ch. 6 above, pp. 180~1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

POLITICAL DOMINANCE AND DEIFICATION 753

Romans as a whole), became prominent in the careers of several dynasts
of the first century B.c.; and, at least between Pompey and Caesar, there
seems to have been an element of conscious competition in displaying
the closest possible connexion with the deity.

At the beginning of the century Sulla claimed the protection of Venus
in Italy and of Aphrodite (conventionally seen as the Greek ‘equivalent’
of the Italian goddess) in the East. This association was paraded not only
on the coins minted by the dictator, in his temple-foundation and his
famous dedication of an axe at Aphrodite’s major sanctuary at Aphrodis-
ias in Asia Minor, following the goddess’ appearance to him in a dream;
but Sulla’s titles also incorporated his claims to her divine favour. In the
Greek world he was officially styled Lucius Cornelius Sulla ‘Epaphrodi-
tus’; in the West he took the extra cognomen ‘Felix’, a title which
indicated good fortune brought by the gods, in this case almost certainly
by Venus.*! Pompey followed suit. Although in many respects more
traditional, at least in Rome, in his display of divine connexions, he too
made much of his closeness to Venus, as is clear from coins issued by his
supporters and the dedications of his own lavish building schemes: the
enormous complex of theatre and temple, for example, dedicated in 55
B.C., was centred on a shrine of Venus Victrix (Venus the Victorious),
through whose aid, one was to assume, Pompey had won his victories;
and a later dedication in the same building project was of a shrine to
Felicitas, an echo of Sulla’s title ‘Felix’. It is as if he was taking over from
the memory of Sulla the particular patronage of Venus, the divine
ancestress of the Roman race.®

Caesar, of course, could outbid both Sulla and Pompey. Venus was for
him more than a patron goddess; she was the ancestor of the family of
Aeneas, from which his own family of the Iulii claimed direct descent.
Caesar is known to have stressed this very point already in 68 B.c. in his
funeral oration for his aunt Julia, when he celebrated her divine ancestry
in the goddess Venus. And later during his dictatorship, when he
embarked on the grand development of a new and lavish forum, in no
doubt conscious rivalry with the building schemes of Pompey, he chose
to dedicate the central temple to Venus Genetrix (Venus the ancestress).
The significance of this would not have been lost on many: while
Pompey and others could claim the support of Venus as forebear of the

6 Plut. Swi. 19.9; 34.4-5; App. BCiv. 1.97.451-5 — with Schilling 1954 (H 114) 272-95. For a
discordant view (that Sulla’s associations were with the Greek Aphrodite, rather than the Roman
Venus) and a bibliography of earlier work, Balsdon 1951 (c 18).

62 Coins: Crawford 1974 (B 144) 424.1; 426.3. Temple of Venus Victrix: seen. 20, above. Shrine of
Felicitas: F. AMlif. in Inser. Ital, 11.177-84, 12 Aug. — with Weinstock 1971 (H 134) 93 and 114. Plut.
Pomp 14.6 records a dispute with Sulla over Pompey’s right to triumph in 81 B.c.: Pompey wished to
ride into Rome on a chariot drawn by four elephants (a vehicle associated with Venus), which
perhaps indicates that the symbolic patronage of Venus was already an issue between the two men.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

754 19. RELIGION

Roman race as a whole, Caesar could and did parade her as the particular
ancestor of his own family.%

Rome’s expansion, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, brought
with it another context in which the leading figures of Rome were
assimilated to the gods. Following broadly in the pattern of cult offered
to the Hellenistic kings, at least from the second century B.C., various
forms of divine honours were granted by eastern cities to individual
Roman generals and governors. From the point of view of the cities
themselves this may be understood as a strategy by which they
incorporated the new, Roman dominance with which they were now
confronted into a system of honours and power with which they were
already familiar.64 From the point of view of the Romans thus honoured
the granting of this divine status represented both a confirmation of the
traditional Roman association between political domination and the
divine and also an opportunity, if they so wished, to explore more lavish
and explicit forms of cult away from the gaze of their Roman peers.
Many examples could be cited: the establishment of a priest, sacrifices
and hymns of praise to Flamininus at Chalcis; games in honour of Q.
Mucius Scaevola in Asia; temples voted to Cicero (though refused by
him) on more than one occasion in the East.6 But by far the most
striking array of divine honours were those offered to Pompey during his
major commands in the East: statues, cult, dedications, the renaming of
months in his honour, maybe even temples. Although in Rome itself
Pompey, with a traditionalist image, sought no further elevation of
divine honours, as conquering hero in the East he was granted as much
divine status as Caesar was later to attain in the capital. Caesar, in other
words, finally brought to Rome a level of deification that his erstwhile
rival had already achieved outside Italy.

We cannot know in any individual case the motives of either the giver
or recipient of divine honours. It would be naive to suppose that some
leading Romans did not positively enjoy the prospect of being treated
like gods, that they did not perceive it as a useful political advantage over
their rivals and that they did not plan or deliberately solicit further
extensions of the honours. It would be likewise naive to imagine that
those offering divine honours did not on some occasions calculate that

63 Funeral speech: Suet. Iu/. 6. New Forum and its connotations: Weinstock 1971 (H 134) 80-90.
Note the explicit recognition of symbolic rivalry in Plut. Pomp. 68.2-3 (Pompey’s fears before
Pharsalus that his dream of spoils on the temple of Venus Victrix was in fact a good omen for Caesar
whose ancestor Venus was).

Price 1984 (H 103) 234-48.

65 Pluc. Flam. 16.7; [Olympia 327; Cic. OF r. 1.1.26; Aft. v.21.7 (though note the lavish honours to
various members of the family of Cicero at Samos, Dorner and Gruber 1953 (H 32)).

66 For example IGRR tv.49~55; 1G x11.2, 59 line 18 (with Robert 1969 (D 289) 49 n. 8); SIG 749 A

and B; for the (debatable) evidence for a temple, App. BCiv. 11.86.361; Dio Lx1x.11.1. Pompeian
precedents for Caesar’s divine honours: Weinstock 1971 (H 134).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DIFFERENTIATION OF RELIGION 755

the offer would redound to their own benefit: there were advantages to
be won if it was your community (rather than the town a few miles down
the road) that presented the Roman governor with a series of sacrifices
and a grandiose temple. Yet underlying these disparate (and for us
irrecoverable) motives, there is a consistent logic of Roman political
action and religion: the exercise of political power involved close
association with the gods. Only in the context of that traditional Roman
logic can the elevation of any of the major political figures in the late
Republic be understood.

VII. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF RELIGION

1. Scepticism, expertise and magic

The developments of Roman religion in the late Republic must also be
seen as part of the intellectual and cultural developments of the period.
So far in this chapter most emphasis has been placed on the integration of
religion with political life and on the religious changes that followed
directly on political changes in the second and first centuries B.c. But
religion is also part of the world of ideas and of the mind. The changes in
patterns of thought in the late Republic, and new ways of perceiving and
classifying human experience, provide another important context for
understanding religious developments. They were not unrelated to the
material, economic or political life of Rome; but taken on their own
(simply for the sake of clarity) they provide another means of illuminat-
ing the developments within what is necessarily a complex amalgam.
One of the most striking processes of change in the late Republic was
the process of ‘structural differentiation’. As Roman society became
more complex, many areas of activity that had previously remained
undefined or, at least, widely diffused through traditional social and
family groups, developed for the first time a separate identity, with their
own specific rules, relatively autonomous from other activities and
institutions. Rhetoric, for example, became a specialized skill, professio-
nally taught, not an accomplishment picked up at home or by practice in
the Forum; likewise the-institutions of criminal and civil law witnessed
the development of legal experts, men who had made themselves
knowledgeable in the law and carefully distinguished their skill from
that of advocates and orators.§? The precise stages and causes of those
developments are complex to reconstruct, and it is hard to evaluate the
relative weight that should be placed upon Rome’s internal develop-
ments as against the effects of her growing contact with the already

67 Rhetoric: Hopkins 1978 (A 53) 76-80; Rawson 1985 (H 109) 143-55. Law: ch. 14 above, p. 534.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

756 19. RELIGION

highly differentiated world of some of the Greek states. The conse-
quences are nevertheless clear: by the end of the Republica range of new,
specialized activities existed, and with those activities went new,
specialized areas of discourse and intellectual expertise.

The differentiation of religion was part of that process. Traditionally,
religion was deeply embedded in the political institutions of Rome: the
political elite were at the same time those who controlled man’s relations
with the gods; the Senate was the central /ocus of both ‘religious’ and
‘political’ power. In many respects that remained as true at the end of the
Republic as it had been two or three centuries earlier. But at the same
time we can trace, over at least the last century B.c., the beginning of the
isolation of religion as an autonomous area of human activity, with its
own rules and specialized discourse. This process can be seen most
clearly in three particular aspects: the development of a discourse of
scepticism about traditional religious practice; the emergence of
religious experts and enthusiasts; and the development of more rigidly
defined boundaries between different types of religious experience —
between the licit and illicit, between religion and magic.

The earliest surviving works fully to develop arguments sceptical of
the established traditions of Roman religion are the philosophical
treatises of Cicero. The second book of his dialogue On Divination, in
particular, written during 44 and 43 B.C., incorporates an extended attack
on the validity of Roman augury, the significance of portents and the
agreed interpretation of oracles. All manner of ridicule is poured on the
gullible, who believe, for example, that cocks crowing before a battle
may portend victory for one particular side, or that the absence of a heart
from the entrails of a sacrificial animal indicates forthcoming disaster.
The ‘rational’ philosopher argues that the crowing of cocks is too
common an occurrence to be significant of anything and that it is simply
a physical impossibility for an animal ever to have lived without a heart.
No element of Roman divination escapes such ruthlessly ‘logical’
scrutiny.%8

The presentation of such arguments does not necessarily indicate that
a deeply sceptical mentality was common amongst the Roman upper
class. Even in the case of On Divination, the sceptical second book is
preceded and balanced by a first book which presents the arguments, in
terms of Greek Stoic philosophy, én favour of divination; and the views of
Cicero himself for and against the practice can hardly be judged with
certainty. The central significance of such intellectualizing treatises on
Roman religion lies rather in the fact that a sceptical argument about
traditional religious practice could at this time be mounted. Religion was

68 See, for example, Cic. Div. 11.36-7; 56.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DIFFERENTIATION OF RELIGION 757

being defined as an area of interest in its own right; and as such it became
the subject of critical scrutiny.

This degree of differentiation of religion developed in Rome first in
the Ciceronian age. It was associated not only with the growing
complexity of Roman society, which provided the general context for
the various processes of structural differentiation, but also with increas-
ing Roman familiarity with Greek philosophy. Contact with the philoso-
phical traditions of the Greek world did, of course, stretch back
considerably further than the middle of the first century B.c. As early as
the beginning of the second century Ennius produced a Latin translation
of Euhemerus’ work on the human origins of the gods; and through the
second and early first centuries there is ample evidence for the exposition
in Latin of Greek philosophical doctrines.’° But, as far as we can tell from
such evidence as survives, it was not until the age of Cicero and his
contemporaries that Greek theory was so integrated with Roman
practice that it played a part in defining and differentiating new areas of
recognizably Roman (rather than translated Greek) discourse. Even the
famous Mucius Scaevola (cos. 95), whose remarks on state religion as
quoted by St Augustine appear to foreshadow the philosophical sophis-
tication of Cicero, provides no convincing early example of the later
trend: Augustine, in a recent scholar’s view, was quoting the words not
of the ‘real’ Scaevola but of Scaevola as a character in a dialogue of
Cicero’s contemporary, Varro. Intellectual discourse on religion was a
new phenomenon of the very latest phase of the Republic.7!

The increasing differentiation of religion was also characterized by its
definition as an area of antiquarian inquiry and by the emergence of
religious enthusiasts or self-styled experts; it was not restricted to the
development -of negative or sceptical discourse on religion. Cicero’s
dialogue On Divination reveals something of many different strands
involved in the process of differentiation, with its Greek philosophical
arguments deployed both to attack and to uphold the traditions of
Roman state religion; and other, more fragmentary, material highlights
even more sharply the growth of religious expertise and religious
curiosity that contributed to the distinctive character of religion in the
late Republic.

69 Beard 1986 (H 8); Schofield 1986 (H 116). For stress on the scepticism of the work, Linderski
1982 (H 78); Momigliano 1987 (H 87).

70 Roman philosophical experts: Spurius Mummius (middle of the second century B.c.): Cic,
Brut. 94; P. Rutilius Rufus (cos. 105 B.c.): Brut. 114; De Or. 1.227; T. Albucius (praetor ¢. 105 B.C.):
Brut. 131. For Latin treatises, note the work of Amafinius (Pearly first century B.c.): Tuse. 1v.6;
Rabirius: Acad.Post. 1.5; Catius; Fam. xv.16.1; 19.1.

1 Beard 1986 (H 8) 36-41. Mucius Scaevola: Augustine, De civ.D. 1v.27, with Cardauns 1960 (B
10). Others accept the quoted views as the views of the ‘real’ Scaevola; see Rawson 1985 (H 109)
299-300.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

758 19. RELIGION

The most comprehensive and best known of the antiquarian treatises
on Roman religion was Varro’s encyclopaedia in sixteen books on the
gods and religious institutions of the city (Antigquitates Rerum Divinarum).
Though it does not survive complete, enough is preserved (largely
quoted by St Augustine in his City of God) for us to have some idea of its
structure and content. It was partly a work of classification, dividing its
subject into five principal sections (priesthoods, holy places, festivals,
rites and gods) and offering within those sections yet finer distinctions on
types of deity and institutions: shrines (sace//a), for example, were treated
separately from temples (aedes sacrae); gods concerned with man himself
(such as those presiding over his birth or marriage) were placed in a
separate category from those concerned with food or clothing. But the
Antiquitates was also (and perhaps more so) a work of compilation,
assembling often recondite information on traditional Roman religion:
the reason for the particular type of head-dress worn by the flamen Dialis;
the significance of the festival of the Lupercalia; the precise difference in
responsibility between the god Liber and the goddess Ceres.72 Other
works of this explanatory, antiquarian type are known, although they do
not now survive even to the same extent as Varro’s, nor did they
originally reach such copious lengths. Granius Flaccus, for example,
dedicated to Caesar a work (De Indigitamentis) on the formulae used by
the pontifices in addressing the city’s gods; and at about the same time one
Veranius wrote several studies on the rituals of the augurs and of the
pontifical college. Looking outside Rome, Aulus Caecina, another
contemporary of Cicero and Caesar, and a man with distinguished
Etruscan forebears, produced a Latin version of the Etruscan science of
thunderbolts and their religious interpretation.”3

These works are a phenomenon of the latest phase of the Republic.
Not that there had been no writing associated with Roman religion
before that time; the pontifical and augural colleges had long kept
records of ritual prescriptions and various aspects of religious law.74 The
late Republican works were, however, different from traditional writing
of that kind; for they were not part of internal priestly discourse within
religion, but commentaries on religion from an external standpoint.
Unlike the so-called ‘priestly books’, they existed apart from traditional
religious practice, defining religion as a subject of scholarly interest. The
causes of the development are complex. Varro himself explains his
antiquarian project as a necessary attempt to rescue from oblivion the

72 Cardauns 1976 (B 1t). For antiquarian information, see, for example, frr. 51; 76; 260. See also
Griffin in ch. 18 above, p. 706.

73 Granius and Veranius: GRF 429-35. Caecina: Rawson 1985 (H 109) 304-5.

™ Regell 1878 (8 95); sdem 1882 (B95); Preibisch 1874 (B 89); idem 1878 (B 89); Rohde 1936 (H 111);

Norden 1939 (H 91). For an analysis of the role of writing in Roman religion, Gordon 1989 (H 50);
Beard 1991 (H 104A).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DIFFERENTIATION OF RELIGION 759

most ancient strands of Roman religious tradition, offering a somewhat
baroque comparison with Aeneas’ rescue of his household gods from the
flames of burning Troy.’> But we should not conclude from this that
antiquarianism was simply a response to neglect of religion in the late
Republic: it is after all always possible to perceive at any period that
ancient knowledge is in danger of disappearing. Much more important is
the fact that Varro’s justification of his endeavour, and the works
themselves, indicate that religion could now be independently defined,
as an autonomous subject — whether in need of rescue or not.

Some of the writers of antiquarian treatises on Roman or Etruscan
religion fall also into the category of religious enthusiasts, men for
whom religion in various forms came to be an object of personal
concern. Appius Claudius Pulcher (cos. 54 B.C.) provides an example. He
was not only a passionate defender of the practice and principles of
augury — so enthusiastic that he earned among his contemporaries the
nickname ‘Pisidian’, after the people of Pisidia, renowned for their
devotion to augury; he also endowed buildings at Eleusis and made a
point of going to consult the Delphic oracle.” Nigidius Figulus (praetor
58 B.C.) likewise, although more famous for his devotion to magic and
astrology, was known also for his enthusiastic commitment to tra-
ditional divination, both Roman and Etruscan.”7 Men such as these have
been seen by modern scholars as deeply conservative, representatives of
the long-standing traditions of Roman religion, against whom the more
radical religious sceptics were reacting. That is hardly convincing: both
the enthusiasts and the sceptics were new phenomena of a time when
religion, in addition to being a part of the political and social life of the
community, first became an independent subject towards which it was
possible to define a personal attitude. Enthusiasm and scepticism were
different sides of the same coin.

The interest of Nigidius Figulus in ‘magic’ provides an example of
another area of differentiation of religion in the late Republic: that is, the
development of increasingly precise boundaries between types of
religious activity, between true religion and its illicit variants. In part,
this differentiation was a reflection of a growing diversity of religious
practices and an increasingly wide range of options in man’s relation
with the gods; but to an equal, if not greater, extent, it was a consequence
of more subtle forms of categorization and definition. Many of the
practices of what was defined as magic in the late Republic had no doubt

% Fr. 2a Cardauns 1976 (n 11).

% Augury: Cic. Div. 1.105. Delphic oracle: Val. Max. 1.8.10. Eleusis: ILLRP 401; Cic. Alt.
v1.1.26; 6.2.

77 Two attested works are entitled De augurio privato and De extis; see frr. 80 and 81 (Swoboda).
For magic and astrology, see Rawson 1985 (H 109) 309~12.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

760 19. RELIGION

always formed part of religious activity at Rome; what was new was the
designation of magic as a separate category.’8

The historical development of the concept of magic at Rome is clear
enough in its broad outlines. In terms of modern western understanding,
there is ample evidence for magical practice and its prohibition in the
early and middle Republic. Cato’s treatise on agriculture includes a clear
example of (in our terms) a magical charm for the healing of sprains and
fractures and the fifth-century Twelve Tables contain the famous clause
that ‘no one should enchant another man’s crops’.”? In contemporary
Roman terms, however, such recommendations and prohibitions were
not perceived as falling into any particular category of ‘the magical’.
Cato, it seems, saw the healing charm no differently from the ‘scientific’
remedies suggested in his work and the legal prohibition on enchanting
crops was almost certainly directed against the results of the action — that
is damage to property — rather than against the method by which that
damage was brought about. Not until the late Republic, and then only
tentatively, was magic defined as a particular and perverted form of
religion.

The clearest and earliest theory of magic preserved at Rome is that
offered by Pliny the Elder (a.p. 23/4—79) in his Natural History (especially
Books 28 and 30). He presents a coherent account of the ‘origins’ of
magical practice (starting in Persia and spreading through Greece and
Italy) and defines magic in relation to science and religion. He refers, for
example, to the bestial quality of magic (men sacrificing men, or drinking
human blood) and to its characteristic use of spells, charms and
incantations. In general magic is seen as opposed to the normal rules of
human behaviour and the traditions of Roman religion.8° No late
Republican author provides such a developed analysis of magic; but we
can at least see a foreshadowing of various elements of Pliny’s theoretical
account in some writing of the middle of the first century B.c. Catullus,
for example, abuses his favourite target Gellius with the suggestion that
a magician (magus) will be the result of Gellius’ incestuous relationship
with his mother and alludes, at the same time, to the Persian origin of
magical practices.8! Cicero, likewise abusing his opponent Vatinius,
charges him with the kind of bestial activities characterized by Pliny as
‘magical’: under the cloak of so-called ‘Pythagoreanism’, Vatinius
indulged in calling up spirits from the underworld and sacrificing young
human victims to the gods below.®2 It seems clear that the definition of

78 R. Garosi, Magia: Studi di storia delle religioni in memoria di Raffaela Garosi, ed. P. Xella (Rome,
1976); North 1980 (H 95); for full bibliography, Le Glay 1976 (+ 75).
7 Cato Agr. 160; Sen. QNat. 1v.7.2; Pliny HN xxvuit.4.17-18.
80 For example Pliny HN xxvitl.2.4-5; 4.19-21; XXX.q.13, with K6ves-Zulauf 1978 (H 69)
256-66.
‘a Catull. go. 82 Cic. In Vatinium 14.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE DIFFERENTIATION OF RELIGION 761

magic as something outside the boundaries of traditional Roman
religion was already taking place.

Many factors contributed to the development of a category of magic.
Foreign influences no doubt played some part. In particular, the
convenient view that the ‘origin’ of magic lay somehow outside the
civilized world (in barbarian Persia) may well have derived from Greek
definitions of magic and Greek polemic against the Persians.® But in
general, as with the other themes discussed in this section, the underly-
ing context for the increasing differentiation (in this case between proper
and improper uses of religion) lay in the growing complexity of Roman
society and the definition of religion for the first time as an autonomous
area of human activity.

2. The emergence of religious groups

A further aspect of the differentiation of religion in the late Republic was
the development of ‘religious groups’ — associations founded for a
specifically religious purpose and often focused on one particular deity
or group of deities. The practice of religion within groups big or small
was not new at Rome: private religious cult had traditionally taken place
in the context of the family; Roman collegia, whether functioning as trade
guilds, burial clubs or political organizations, had often incorporated a
‘religious’ dimension and a particular patron deity. What was new about
the religious groups of the late Republic was that their central and
defining purpose was religious.

Such groups could easily be perceived as a threat to the traditional
forms of religion at Rome, to the largely undifferentiated amalgam of
religion and politics and, more specifically, to the control of man’s
relations with the gods vested in the political elite of the city. Not only
were many of them centred on explicitly ‘foreign’ deities such as
Dionysus or Isis, but their very existence suggested an alternative /ocus of
religious power in the state — alternative, that is, to the Senate and the
traditional political leaders. This element of opposition, implicit in the
new religious associations, largely explains the periodic attempts to
abolish their cults, expel their adherents or, at least, control their
practices.

The best-documented example of the emergence of a religious group
and its subsequent repression is found in the history of the Bacchic cult in
Italy in the early second century B.c. and in the strict regulation of its
future activities by decree of the Senate in 186 B.c. By good fortune, we
have not only Livy’s account of the discovery of this cult by the Roman

83 Pliny HN xxx.2.3-11, with Garosi, Magia (above, n.78) 30-1.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

762 19. RELIGION

authorities but also a copy of the senatus consultum, inscribed on bronze,
giving full details of the restrictions imposed upon it and its practi-
tioners. Together these documents allow us a relatively full understand-
ing of the nature of the Bacchic groups and the crisis they caused at
Rome.® The history of religious groups in the later second and first
century B.c. and the causes of their occasional repression can only be
analysed in terms of a model derived from this one well-documented
incident.

Livy gives a racy account of the origin of this particular form of the
Bacchic cult in Italy and of its disclosure to the Senate. He talks of the
introduction of ‘orgiastic rites’ from Greece, first into Etruria, then to
Rome itself; and with those rites the spread of crime and debauchery of
every kind — perjury, promiscuity and murder.§5 Yet despite such
flagrant crimes, it was not (according to Livy’s story) until one young
potential initiate was induced by his mistress and his aunt to turn all his
information over to the consul Postumius that the Roman authorities
became fully aware of what had been going on. The Senate then moved
to suppress the cult, destroying the existing places of Bacchic worship
and requiring senatorial permission, under rigorous conditions, for any
form of cult to continue.

The crisis caused by the Bacchists was rather more than the simple
spread of lust and crime that Livy’s account, at first sight, seems to imply.
While the lurid details preserved in the historian reflect, no doubt, the
senatorial justification for control of the cult, careful analysis of Livy’s
story together with the surviving decree of the Senate suggests a more
complex underlying problem. The crucial fact that emerges from both
sources is that the Senate did not attempt to suppress the cult entirely —
the obvious response to the criminal activity stressed by Livy. Instead it
framed a decree which aimed to remove its independent group identity;
destroying its cult centres; restricting the numbers of those who could
take part in any rite; forbidding their holding of funds in common;
abolishing the hierarchy of office-holding within the cult. The ruling
suggests an awareness on the part of at least some senators that the
danger of the cult lay in its function as an alternative religious and social
group outside the control of the traditional religious and political
authorities of the state. A differentiated religious group, demanding the
symbolic commitment of initiation, offered its adherents a new focus of
loyalty and an independent sense of belonging; it was this that the Senate
attempted to regulate.%

Similar tensions between new specifically religious groups and the

8¢ ILLRP 51; Livy xxx1x.8—-19. See Gallini 1970 (H 46) 11-96; Turcan 1972 (H 128); North 1979
(H 94). Archaeological evidence for the character and destruction of Bacchic shrines: Paillier 1976 (H
98) 739-42 and 1983 (H 100).

85 Livy xxxix.8.5—8. 86 Gallini 1970 (H 46) 86-90; North 1979 (H 94) 90-8.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN RELIGION AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 763

traditional forms of religious and political authority underlay the later
attempts by the Roman authorities to control the cult of Isis and the
practice of astrology. Neither case is as fully documented as the crisis
over the worship of Bacchus, and, indeed, almost nothing can be said
about the particular circumstances that led to the expulsion of the
‘Chaldae?’ (astrologers) from Rome in 139 B.C. or to the repeated
destruction of Isiac shrines in (probably) 59, 58, 53, 50 and 48.87 But the
nature of the problem in general terms may easily be deduced. The cult of
Isis, with its independent priesthood and its focus on devotion in a
personal and caring deity could represent (like the Bacchic cult) a
potentially dangerous alternative society, out of the control of the
traditional political elite.88 Likewise astrology, with its specialized form
of religious knowledge in the hands of a set of experts outside the
traditional priestly groups of the city, necessarily constituted a separate,
and perhaps rival, /ocus of religious power. Although it did not offer a
social alternative in the sense of group membership, it represented
another form of religious differentiation which threatened the undiffer-
entiated politico-religious amalgam of traditional Roman practice.

In all these matters the attitudes of the Roman Senate and senators
were complex. It would be oversimplifying to suggest that the Senate
was straightforwardly opposed to what we perceive as the differentiation
of religion. Senators themselves were, after all, caught up in that process
and provide (as was seen in the last section) some of the classic examples
of differentiation, in terms of the development of a specifically religious
discourse or religious enthusiasm. It would also be oversimplifying to
suggest that there was only one reason for senatorial repression of new
cults or religious practices. There were no doubt just as many senators
who genuinely feared the crimes spread by the Bacchists or objected to
the absurdity of astrology as those who sensed the danger in the
development of independent religious groups or the definition of new
forms of religious knowledge. Nevertheless, the underlying logic of the
periodic regulation or repression of new cults and religious groups in the
late Republic lies primarily in the clash between traditional and differen-
tiated forms of religious organization and experience.

VIII. ROMAN RELIGION AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD

The major factor that determined the changing character of religion in
the late Republic was Roman imperial expansion. Almost every section

87 Astrologers: Val. Max. 1.3.3; Livy Per. tiv; Cramer 1951 (H 28) 14-17, with n. 78 above.
Shrines of Isis: Varro, ap. Tert. Ad. Nat. 1.10.17-18; Dio xL.47.3-4; xLit.26.2; Val.Max. 1.3.4;
Malaise 1972 (H 80) 362-77.

488 The potential of the cult of Isis to develop into an independent focus of loyalty is illustrated by
the account of it in Apul. Met. — e.g. x1.21-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

764 19. RELIGION

of this chapter has touched on the religious consequences of the growth
of Rome’s empire: the dying out of the traditional Fetial ritual for
declaration of war; religious honours paid to Rome’s conquering
generals in the Greek East; the effect of growing contact with Greek
intellectual currents on the development of religious discourse at Rome.
This final section will consider three further aspects of religious change
in the context of Rome’s expanding empire: the importation of ‘foreign’
cults to Rome; Rome’s export of its own traditional religious forms to
the outside world; and the development of foreign perspectives on
Roman religion, as outsiders, particularly Greeks, began to scrutinize
the religious practices of their conqueror.

In the last century of the Republic foreign deities and cults came to
Rome in considerable numbers. The novelty should not be overrated:
Roman religion, like most polytheistic systems, had always imported
and incorporated elements from the outside. Gods as central in the
Roman pantheon as Apollo and Castor and Pollux were early fifth-
century imports from the Greek world;8° and the Sibylline oracles,
preserved on the Capitol, according to Roman legend, from the reign of
the last king Tarquin, were written in Greek and certainly owed their
origin to a non-Roman source.% The new feature of the imports of the
late Republic was not so much their number (if anything, smaller than in
the third century), but the fact that they came from further afield and
were not so fully incorporated in the traditional religious forms of the
city. ,

The point of transition was reached as far back as 205 when, following
consultation of the Sibylline oracles, the Senate decided to bring to
Rome the cult of Cybele and even the cult image of the goddess — a large
black stone ~ from her temple at Pessinus in Asia Minor.®! In certain
respects that action can be seen as just one of a series of new cult
foundations in the second half of the third century, stimulated by the
Romans’ need for divine support in the crises of the Second Punic War.
But in other respects the importation of Cybele (or ‘Magna Mater’, ‘The
Great Mother’, as she was commonly known) differed from those that
had gone before. Not only was she a deity from outside the central areas
of the Graeco-Roman world — an indication of how far Rome’s influence
and knowledge now spread. But also, despite the official initiative that
lay behind the establishment of the cult in Rome, the Senate did not
permit Roman citizens full involvement in its orgiastic rites. The cult of

89 Castor and Pollux: Livy 1.20.12; Weinstock 1960 (B 257) 112.14; Castagnoli 1959 (B 268); idem
1975 (B 269). Apollo: Livy 1v.25.3-4; Gagé 1955 (H 44) 19-68; Simon 1978 (H 118).

® Gell. NA 1.19; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. tv.62. For the role of the Sibylline books in innovation,
North 1976 (H 93) 9, and, generally, Parke 1988 (a 89).

1 Livy xxix.10.q-11.8; 14.5-14.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN RELIGION AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 765

Cybele remained a recognizably ‘foreign’ element within religious life at
Rome.”

The pattern of imports through the last years of the Republic broadly
followed that of Cybele. The new cults — Isis and Sarapis, for example, or
Mithras, who was possibly introduced to Italy before the end of the
Republic — had their origin in more distant countries (Egypt and Persia)
and, although to some degree already Hellenized by the time of their
entry into Italy, kept a foreign identity, undomesticated within tra-
ditional Roman cult.%3 In part this change is to be connected with the
tendency towards the differentiation of religious groups discussed in the
last section, but in part it also relates to Rome’s greater and greater
territorial expansion. Even traditional Roman polytheism, expansive as
it was, could not simply incorporate the yet more alien religious forms
that the Romans encountered abroad or met in their increasingly
cosmopolitan city. ‘Religion at Rome’ began in the late Republic to be
something rather different from ‘Roman religion’.

The religious interaction between Rome and the outside world
operated also in the opposite direction. Just as the cultures of Rome’s
empire and beyond brought new elements into the city of Rome, so in
turn Roman power influenced the religion of Rome’s territories in Italy
and overseas. In this sense, by the late Republic, recognizably ‘Roman’
religion could be found elsewhere than in Rome itself.

The clearest instance of the direct export of Roman religious forms
can be seen in the establishment and regulation of religious practice in
the Roman citizen colonies founded for the settlement of military
veterans and the poor in Italy and sometimes (at least from the Gracchan
period) in provincial territory. Not only were they founded, as was
traditional with new Roman settlements, according to a religious ritual
believed to mirror that used by Romulus in the foundation of Rome, but
also their religious organization was modelled directly on that of the
mother-city. This is well illustrated by the surviving charter of founda-
tion for Julius Caesar’s colony at Urso in southern Spain. Several clauses
lay down regulations for the selection and service of the priests of the
community — pontifices and augures:

And the said pontiffs and augurs who shall be members of the several colleges,
and also their children, shall have exemption from military service and
compulsory public service solemnly guaranteed, in such wise as a pontiff in

92 The ‘foreign’ elements are most clearly illustrated by the visual evidence for the cult; sce
Vermaseren 1977 (H 129) esp. Pls. 44; 64-8. For official ambivalence towards full Roman
involvement in the cult and the reported prohibition against Roman citizens becoming castrated
priests of Cybele see Bomer 1964 (H 14).

93 Survey and discussion of the early development of Mithraism: Gordon 1977/8 (B 166); Beck
1984 (H 11) 2002-115, with Plut. Pomp. 24.7. Egyptian cults: Malaise 1972 (H 80); Dunand 1980 (H
36); Coarelli 1984 (c 184).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

766 19. RELIGION

Rome has or shall have the same, and all their military service shall be accounted
as discharged. Respecting the auspices and matters appertaining to the same,
jurisdiction shall belong to the augurs. And the said pontiffs and augurs shall
have the right and power to use the toga praetexta at all games publicly celebrated
by magistrates, and at public sacrifices of the Colonia Genetiva Iulia™ per-
formed by themselves, and the said pontiffs and augurs shall have the right and
power to sit among the decurions to witness the games and gladiatorial
combats.%

We should note particularly here the explicit reference in the colonial
charter to the religious practice of Rome itself. It was not a question of
vague, haphazard similarities between the religion of a colony and the
religion of the mother-city. The export of acommunity, whether to Italy
or further afield, involved the systematic and conscious replication of the
religious forms of the city of Rome.

Moreover, the spread of Roman power led provincial communities,
whether directly encouraged by Rome or not, to adopt various symbolic
forms in explicit recognition of Roman dominance or even drawn from
Roman religion itself. The best-known development, from the early
second century on, was the spread through the Greek world of cults
centred on a deified personification of Rome ~— ‘Dea Roma’ - or such
variants as “The People of the Romans’ or ‘Rome and the Roman
Benefactors’. A few communities in the East dedicated temples to Rome
- notably Smyrna, from as early as 195 B.c., Alabanda in Caria and
Miletus. Many more had priests of the goddess Rome, festivals and
sacrifices. A particularly vivid second-century inscription from Miletus,
for example, details the sacrifices to be performed to ‘Roma’ and ‘The
People of the Romans’ — not only were there special occasions when
priests or magistrates were to make such offerings, but the regular
political turning-points of city life (such as the entry into office of new
magistrates) were also to be marked by such sacrifices to the deification
of Rome and its people.% No similar cult of Roma is known from Rome
itself until the reign of Hadrian,® so we are not here dealing with Greek
emulation of contemporary Roman practice: the cults are rather, like the
deification of individual Roman governors or generals, part of a process
by which eastern cities incorporated Roman power into their own
religious, cultural and symbolic world — a religious representation of
Rome developed side by side with Roman dominance.

Other developments, by contrast, show the cities of the Greek world
adopting elements of traditional Roman symbolism or even parading

% That is, Urso.

9% FIR A 1.21.66 (p. 181); trans. Hardy 1912 (B 169) 29.

96 Smyrna: Tac. Ann. 1v.56. Alabanda: Livy xiu1.6.5. Miletus: Sokolowski 1969 (B 245) 49. In

general, see Mellor 1975 (H 82); Fayer 1976 (H 38); Price 1984 (H 103).
97 Mellor 1975 (H 82) 201; J. Beaujeu, La religion romaine a l'apogée de empire (Paris, 1955) 128-36.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

ROMAN RELIGION AND THE OUTSIDE WORLD 767

allegiance to Rome in the religious centre of Rome itself. An inscription
from the island of Chios provides a particularly clear, if exceptional,
illustration of Roman symbolism in a Greek context. It records the
establishment, probably in the early second century B.c., of a procession,
sacrifice and games in honour of Roma; but alongside these fairly
standard elements, it also records the dedication to Roma of a sculpture
of Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf — a classic scene of Roman
myth used in a Greek cultic context.% In the city of Rome itself a series of
inscriptions from the Capitoline hill recording dedications by various
eastern communities in gratitude for Roman benefactions or assistance
shows the other facet of Greek assimilation of Roman religious forms.
The original texts (of which some are now preserved only in reinscrip-
tions of the Sullan era or Renaissance manuscript copies) dated from the
early second to the middle of the first century B.c. and included a
dedication by the Lycians of a statue of Roma to Jupiter Capitolinus and
the Roman People and likewise a dedication by Mithridates Philopator
(middle of the second century B.c.) and by Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia
(early first century B.C.) presumably also to the Capitoline god.® The
principal significance of these texts, as of the Chiot dedication, lies in the
evidence they provide for the gradual ‘Romanization’ of the religion of
the cities of the Greek world. As Roman power spread, so also Roman
religious forms began to have a meaning further and further afield and
the cult places of the city of Rome itself became seen by the eastern
communities as an appropriate area for their own religious dedications.

Rome’s imperial expansion influenced religious thought as much as
religious practice. In earlier sections we have already noted the effects of
growing contact with Greek philosophy on the intellectual approaches
of the Romans to their own religious system. Such contact had, of
course, another aspect: Greek intellectuals, as they became perforce
more familiar with the Roman world, began to formulate for the first
time their own views on Roman religion and cult practice. Greek writing
from the second century B.c. onwards includes several such analyses of
the character of traditional religion at Rome — important as contempor-
ary evidence, but as the evidence of outsiders rather than of native
practitioners.

The earliest surviving and best-known Republican account of Roman
religion from the pen of a Greek is that by Polybius. A native of Achaea,
he was resident in Rome (at first as a hostage, later of his own free will)
for much of the period from 170 to his death in the last years of the

98 Bull. ép. 1980, 353; Moretti 1980 (H 88); Derow and Forrest 1982 (B 148) with arguments fora
date around 190-188 B.c.

99 The Republican texts, /LLRP 174-81. Full publication and discussion by Degrassi 195 1-2 (H
30). For a review of the controversy over the date and type of monument from which these texts
came, see Mellor 1975 (H 82) 203-6.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

768 19. RELIGION

second century; and during this time he wrote his history of Rome’s rise
to power in the Mediterranean. It included a discussion of Roman
political institutions and briefly (at least in the surviving text) of Roman
religion. The analysis is pointed and distinctive. The Romans are
acknowledged to be superior to other nations in the nature of their
religious convictions, which have entered public and private life to a
degree unparalleled elsewhere; but, as if to undercut this apparent
devotion, the motivation for such a prominence of religion is reckoned
to be the need of the Roman elite to control the masses. Adopting a
philosophical position attested in Greece since at least the fifth century
B.c. and with an even longer history since, he argues that ‘as every
multitude is fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion and violent
anger, the multitude must be held in by invisible terrors and suchlike
pageantry’.!© Roman religion, for Polybius, came close to being the
‘opiate of the people’.

This analysis is both less and more important than it has been
conventionally held to be by modern scholars. It is less important,
because it is not (as it has often been taken to be) an ‘objective’ analysis of
the strength of Roman religious practice. It cannot be used as the final
tool with which to undermine the religious ‘sincerity’ of the Roman elite,
for it is, after all, the individual, sense-making, perspective of one man,
and one whose intellectual roots lay in a religious and cultural environ-
ment quite alien from that of Rome. Its importance lies rather in the
further evidence it gives of the increasing complexity of Roman religious
thought in the late Republic. More people had more views on Roman
religion, from more different perspectives, than ever before. And those
views, necessarily, increasingly interacted: few senators, for example,
whether they accepted it or not, could have read Polybius’ account of
their traditional religious practice without being in some way affected
and having to think out attitudes previously unthought. If religion is, at
one level, the sum of possible religious attitudes, Roman religion in the
late Republic was quite simply getting bigger.

100 Polyb. v1.56.6—15, with Walbank 1957-69 (B 121) 741-3; Pédech 1965 (H 101); Dorrie 1974 (B
28).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EPILOGUE

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

J. A. CROOK, ANDREW LINTOTT AND ELIZABETH RAWSON

At the beginning of this volume readers were offered a brief survey of
opinions down the ages about the causes of the fall of the Republic; now,
with the facts before them, they will have formed opinions of their own.
However, they may still, reasonably, expect the editors of the volume to
state theirs: how should this tumultuous period be summed up,! and,
especially, are there any integrating concepts to link the political and
military narrative of the first part with the subsequent chapters about law
and society, economics, religion and ideas?

Some parallel may here be perceived to the debates about the fall of the
Roman Empire. In that case the simplistic question, ‘did it decline or was
it assassinated?’, though requiring to be reformulated and answered with
considerable subtlety, remains not a bad starting-point. So: did the
political order that we know as the Roman Republic decline, or was it
assassinated? Did it contain the dialectic of its own collapse, or could it,
but for the ambitions of certain dynasts (above all, Pompey and Caesar,
Antony and Octavian), have survived the changes taking place in
Roman society?

Both the experience of another twenty centuries and the refinements
of modern historical explanation make it out of the question for us to be
content with the standard answer given by the Romans themselves, that
the political order was destroyed by moral decline resulting from wealth,
greed and luxury.? Change was occurring in moral conceptions, as in
everything else, but that is true of all periods and is not necessarily a
symptom of morbidity in the body politic. Nor is it easily open to us now
to say that what fell was in any case only a corrupt and unlamented
oligarchy. Recent analyses of the Republican constitution have laid
stress on its genuinely democratic aspects:3 it is nowadays insisted that
Polybius drew a true picture after all, and that Rome did have a ‘mixed

’ For such a summing-up, on a larger scale than is here attempted, see Brunt 1988 (A 19) ch. 1.

2 There are examples enough in history of wealth and materialism accompanying not decline but
advance of a society.

3 Thus Nicolet 1974 (A 81) and 1976 (A 82) passim; Millar 1984 (A 75) and 1986 (c 113); Lintott
1987 (a 65); Brunt 1988 (A 19) chs. 1 and 6-9.

769

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

770 EPILOGUE

constitution’, and the governing class, being dependent in each gene-
ration upon the electorate, could not treat the res publica as their private
game. In so far as such analyses are right, we cannot ascribe the fall of the
Republic merely to the fortuitously disastrous outcome of a political
poker-match amongst the principes viri, any more than to a downturn in
some Dow- Jones index of morality, but must turn to the identification of
structural faults. To the very extent that the Republic displayed genuine
elements of liberty and democracy, we have to ask what it was about the
institutions that were supposed to guarantee those values that made
them vulnerable to the political challenges at home and abroad created
by the growth of wealth and power, and the conceptual challenges
caused by the cracking of the narrow framework of Roman perceptions.

The ancient history-writers themselves, as we have seen, recognized
two dominant motifs in the later Republic. Florus’ Epitome of Roman
history illustrates this most simply: one book of foreign conquests, one
book of civil strife. So, also, Appian followed his monographs on the
Roman subjection of foreign powers by his five books of Civil Wars, The
implied succession is actually somewhat un-historical. Though Roman
expansion slowed after the dramatic advances of the middle Republic, it
did not cease altogether in the fifty years before the Social War. Almost
ten years of civil and quasi-civil war did then cause an intermission, but
following that setback the last twenty years of the Republic saw striking
new conquests, which remained largely untouched by the new civil wars
of the forties.

Now Rome’s success abroad brought wealth, both to the state and to
individuals, whether commanders and soldiers or financiers and busi-
nessmen. It opened new opportunities for trade, and for the acquisition
of real estate abroad, to both Romans and Italians. At the same time it
was the natural form of self-fulfilment for perhaps the most military-
minded society in antiquity: it satisfied the desire for g/oria which was the
supreme value of the aristocracy.

Yet the conquests fuelled the strife, and empire made new and
burdensome demands. If the armies were victorious, wealth accrued,
first as booty and later as regular tribute. But it became increasingly hard
to maintain citizen manpower for the number of legions needed: there
was a growing imbalance between activities and resources. The tra-
ditional source of legionaries was the country population, not that of the
town, and the land came under competing pressures, from the rich
seeking safe investment for the new capital that was largely the spoils of
empire, and the peasantry fighting to retain their traditional landhold-
ings, as was essential if the reservoir of conscript manpower was to be
maintained. That is why agrarian laws were a particular focus of conflict;
and some of the principes viri decided that it conduced to their own

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EPILOGUE 771

political standing as well as the good of the res publica for them to support
agrarian programmes. And when spare land was all taken up, what then?
It is not justified to claim that the primary cause of the civil wars was the
hunger of peasant conscripts for land; nevertheless, attempts to satisfy
the demand were regularly the cause of political crises, and finally,
during the civil wars with which our narrative ends, serving armies did
begin explicitly to bargain for land for themselves. And in Italy, short of
purchase, Paul could only be paid by robbing Peter.

Besides being an opportunity, the expansion of empire was a strain
and a temptation for the principes viri. Their ambitions grew to match the
widening horizons of Roman power: both Pompey and Caesar were
lured by the ghost of Alexander the Great. New commands of long-
term duration, conferred by the assembly of the people or by the Senate,
and often covering wide and distant regions, encouraged and even
entailed independent initiatives on the part of their holders, making
them impatient of consultation with the home government when
immediate and decisive action seemed necessary. The habits so acquired
inclined them to take short cuts in the political sphere at home, in order
to achieve what they regarded as legitimate aims. We should not deduce
from their manipulation of violence and corruption that they necessarily
wanted to become dictators.

Deep divisions certainly existed in Roman society between slave and
free, rich and poor, citizen and non-citizen; but none of them was a direct
cause of the fall of the Republic. The slave revolts that occurred during
our period, though traumatic in their time, did not shake Roman society
in the long term, nor did the rural revolt that was part of the tale of the
Catilinarian conspiracy. The conflict between Rome and the Italian socii
came within an ace of destroying Rome, but did not do so; it did,
however, by resulting in the incorporation of the soci, contribute an
important indirect factor to the fall of the Republic. The change was
slow: it took another generation for the Italians to achieve parity with
the Romans in a unified Roman state. But an evolution had been started
which had at least one fundamental consequence, that the populus
Romanus was an altogether larger and wider body than before, and the
city population of Rome could no longer claim to count as its principal
and decisive element. On the one hand, to the new, wider citizen body
not all the preoccupations of the older, narrower populus Romanus were of
much interest; and, on the other, the city population, consisting very
heavily of the class of freed slaves, socially despised by the upper class,
began to form a political entity (not constitutionally, of course) in its
own right, once again with the support of interested politicians.

During the late Republic the rural and the urban poor (but especially
and most significantly the latter) were stimulated by the pops/ares to

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

772 EPILOGUE

assert themselves and back measures conducive to their welfare by
cheers, by votes, and in the end by force. That culminated in the anarchy
of the fifties, when violence, compounded by bribery, made the city of
Rome at times unmanageable, and basic constitutional functions, such as
elections, could not be performed. Ancient democracies and oligarchies
all (with the one exception of Athens for a period) suffered from the
structural defect that major conflicts of policy could only take the form
of stasis, civil strife. The Romans, moreover, accepted the use of force (in
the form of self-help, for example, and sometimes symbolic rather than
actual) as part of the structure of their law and politics, so that the barrier
between normal political conflict and v/s was flimsy. On the other hand,
notwithstanding the acceptance of force, Rome had been a society witha
strong traditional discipline, obedient to the auctoritas of the principes viri;
but if the principes themselves were at odds and ready to support violence
in the Forum and the assembly, such traditional mechanisms could no
longer work.4

It should not be concluded from the violence that the whole Roman
body politic was rotten and the story of the late Republic no more than a
power-struggle between a handful of self-seeking political bosses. In the
great conflicts over repetundae, the agrarian laws, the franchise and the
extensions of imperium we should be prepared to allow that serious men
were applying their minds and efforts to the problems of their times. And
that there was conflict between radicals and conservatives, that there
were passions and prosecutions, demonstrations, vetoes and filibusters,
shows that Roman public life was healthy, not ailing. Like politicians at
all periods of history, the principes of the late Republic were moved by
personal ambition; but that does not require us to deny them public spirit
or political ideals. Saturninus and Clodius will have had a political
vision, a species rei publicae, even if it was one in which they themselves
bulked large; and that applies equally to their optimate opponents who
sought to preserve order and the status quo in the face of popular
agitation. Even Sulla, the portent of catastrophe, virtuously retired from
his dictatorship.

Sulla had attempted a diagnosis of Rome’s structural weaknesses,
identifying them as the excessive power of over-mighty individuals as
against the Senate and the excessive power of the tribunes to stir up
opposition (seen, of course, as sfasis, in the absence of any concept of the
value of an opposition). The diagnosis, at least as to the former point, was
correct, but the remedies inadequate, for reasons that Sulla’s own career
made plain to ambitious successors: the army would have had, some-
how, to be de-politicized. As for the tribunate, its treatment by Sulla

4 Sce the (in some ways contrasting) views of Lintott 1968 (A 62) and Nippel 1988 (A 85).

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EPILOGUE 773

highlights a yet more general weakness: the inability of the Romans (as,
indeed, of the people of antiquity in general) to conceive political
improvement as anything but putting the clock back ~— reverting to some
better state supposed to have existed in the past. Change was occurring
rapidly in every branch of Roman life; it needed to be lived with and not
wished away, to be adapted to and not just proscribed. Whether the
Republic could have modified its political institutions and remained the
Republic we can never really say; but it did not try radically enough.

The last century of the Republic, though an age of change, was
anything but an age of decline. Most emphatically repudiated in these
pages has been the stereotype (believed in by many Romans themselves)
in which the alleged decline was measured in terms of the decay of
respect for the traditional religion. Both as to the facts and as to their
interpretation that can now be seen to have been mistaken. Change there
certainly was, and tension between older and newer concepts — structur-
ally related, indeed, to the new tensions in politics. And although that
was not decline, it was certainly a factor making for instability.

As to the economic, cultural and intellectual fields, our period was one
of rapid advance and achievement. The increasing wealth of the political
class, largely acquired from empire, stimulated economic demand and
cultural pretensions. The increase in the slave population and the
economic pressures on the peasantry in parts of Italy fuelled grave social
conflicts, though, as was said above, they were not direct factors in the
fall of the Republic. More directly culpable of a part in that fall, perhaps,
was the other serious economic problem of the era, that of indebtedness,
which afflicted all orders of society, though in different ways. In
particular the cycle of borrowing and lending on the security of land,
amongst the governing class, for the maintenance of a high lifestyle
conducive to prestige with the electorate and the funding of political
manipulation, not only led to the sacrifice of political independence but
was a powerful destabilizer in times of political crisis.

On the other hand, ambitio, the traditional competitiveness of the
upper class, while greater and greater resources made it ever more
potentially destructive, had also its positive side, in the patronage by the
principes viri of arts, philosophy, thought and letters. In the cultural
sphere, wherever we look we see rapid responses to the challenge of
acquaintance with Greek achievements; and in the last twenty years or so
of the Republic the Romans began to feel that they could rival their
mentors in sophistication in some fields. Readers of Cicero, Catullus,
Sallust and Lucretius may agree with them, and will remember that the
famous ‘Augustan’ writers, except Ovid, were formed before the
“Augustan’ age ever began, and that there were salons of patronage
before, and other than, that of Maecenas.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

774 EPILOGUE

Another fruit of both empire and ambitio was public architecture; and
Rome learnt about urban amenity and grandeur not just from Greece
directly but in part, at least, through the mediation of the Italian soci,
whose rising prosperity during those years produced monumental
centres of new elaboration, with forum-complexes and stone theatres
and amphitheatres.

It is a familiar historical phenomenon that the arts and sciences often
flourish most in troubled times. The same was true, at Rome, of the law.
The criminal law was expanded from very slender beginnings in an effort
— only partially successful — to uphold social order at a time of perceived
disintegration; and the civil law underwent its most creative phase ever,
in response both to social demands and to those of internal logic and
cohesion.

But the effect of all the cultural developments (including the greater
professionalism of the law) upon people in the late Republic was
unsettling. The assault on mos maiorum, from all directions, was too
rapid, and too many landmarks and handholds were swept away.5
Scholars have more than once suggested that Augustus was not the
architect or even the culminator of the ‘Roman Revolution’; on the
contrary, once he had achieved sole power he stopped it. He applied the
brake toa society that had been racing frenetically in new directions; and
the Principate brought stability to Rome once more at the cost of the
slowing down and eventual stagnation of ideas and experiments.

Nevertheless, men’s perceptions did change with, or were changed
by, the Principate, and necessarily so. For in the wider world of which
Rome had, by conquest and with a view to exploitation, made herself the
mistress, most people did not think like antique Romans, and mainten-
ance of the old Republican polity would have been a nonsense. The more
emphasis we choose to place upon the degree of liberty and equality that
characterized — for free-born cives Romani only ~ the traditional, face-to-
face Republican political order, the more plainly that can be seen to be
true. It may be banal so to conclude, but some sea-change of the Roman
Republic, as Scipio Aemilianus had known it and Cicero revered it, was
as inevitable as anything in history can be, though the venerability of its
institutions ensured that they would be used to clothe the new order that
succeeded it. Whether that particular sort of new order was equally
inevitable is altogether too hard a question.

A final question that can be more easily (if not so very easily) answered

> Cicero wrote in a bewildered way to Atticus after Caesar’s murder: ‘We have recovered /ibertas
but not got back the res publica along with it.’ What he had hoped for was ‘business as usual’: in 43
B.c., not long before Octavian’s first march on Rome, he was preparing for che praetorian elections
just as he would have done before the civil wars: Fan. x.25.23 x1.16.2 and 17.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

EPILOGUE 775

is what was gained and lost with the fall of the Republic. The liberty and
equality of the Republican era, such as they were, were lost, to be sure;®
and as to the ‘rule of law’, Cicero’s fears expressed in a letter to Papirius
Paetus in 46 B.c. well reflect not only his current unease about Julius
Caesar but the fears that lurked among the aristocracy under the
Principate even in its tranquil periods under ‘good emperors’: ‘Every-
thing becomes uncertain when the rule of law is abandoned, and there is
no guaranteeing the future of anything that depends on someone else’s
will, not to say whim.’? At first sight that comment scarcely seems
applicable to the Augustan system: the rule of law returned — indeed, that
was one secret of Augustus’ success — and the doctrine that the emperor
was /egibus solutus, dispensed from the laws, was canonized only at the end
of long further developments. Nevertheless, the rule of law was only
there because, and in so far as, the ruler as a matter of practice determined
it should be, and that arbitrariness stood revealed at times of crisis.

On the other hand, we may view a little cynically the cries of woe
about the loss of liberty and equality and the rule of law uttered by men
whose notion of those virtues was the perpetuation of the traditional
dominance of their own kind: the humbler free-born probably had a
better economic and social deal under the emperors, and so had the class
of freed slaves, the former socéi came into their own, and the provincial
upper class in due time joined the ranks of the imperial governing elite.
For some of the changes most characteristic of the last century of the
Republic created the basis for an imperial world-order, even though the
Republican system was unable to handle so changed a world. The
enfranchisement of Italy and the spread of Roman citizens — and Roman
citizenship — into the provinces provided the emperors, as time went on,
with a vastly enlarged governing class to call on, and by the end of the
Republic Rome had discovered that empire demanded government. The
incipient long-term professionalism of the armies® made it relatively easy
for Augustus to create the kind of force appropriate to a vast territorial
empire; and the new commands and tenures of the principes viri that
resulted from the problems of the late Republic provided a paradigm for
the commands and tenures of the new principes, the emperors, and their
collegae imperii.° Finally, perhaps most important of all, the first steps
were taken in our period (they were of necessity so taken) towards the
integration of city-governments, in Italy and the West, into a structure of

6 Brutus and Cassius to Antony in May and August 44 B.c.: ‘We have sought nothing but a shared
liberty ... we desire you to be a great and renowned man in a free res publica, we challenge you to no
feud, but we value our liberty more than your friendship’ (Fam. xt.2.2 and 3.4).

7 Fam. 1x.16.3. 8 Smith 1958 (A 114A) passin.

9 See the fragment of Augustus’ /axdatio of Agrippa, PKéln 1. 10.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

776 EPILOGUE

municipal and central government, which was to be of ever wider
application.!° The Roman Empire did not have to be invented out of
nothing: many of the changes described in this volume prepared the way
for it.

And yet, to return in the end to politics and policy and the making of
decisions about the goals of society and the means of reaching them, the
most significant thing in the long run about the transition from Republic
to Principate is the restriction of possibilities, the disappearance of
political alternatives — or, to put it another way, the reduction of the
independent points of decision-making to, ultimately, just one. In the
Dialogus attributed to the historian Tacitus that point is made with high
irony:!! “What need is there for long speeches in the Senate, when the
Top People come swiftly to agreement? What need for endless harangues
at public meetings, now that policy is settled not by the inexperienced
masses but by a supremely wise man, and one alone?’ That irony can
serve as epilogue to our volume.

10 Fora convenient survey (though its principal thesis remains controversial) see Galsterer 1987
(F 60). 1) Dial. 41.4 and, for the irony, Heldmann 1982 (H 59) 280-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

He Poldp — swweEEy LIT satnqoisuy
™~
(L£-oF)
eIpUEXa]Y — J9purxs;y SNNOOLLNY SVIHLVLLVIN BIPUEXI[Y
(¢¢—£9) (¢9-49)
Il SANWOUAH ILSNTNGOLSIYY
(L9-9L) (9L-£01) (f01-vo1)
VUCNV X4TV ANOTVS - SNAVNNV[ UFONVXATV snuosnuy ISNINdOLsluV Hvanf
(po1—hf1)
SeIIENEYY I SANVOUAH NHOf sepaf
(zb1-091) (091-$91) (P£1—-zb1)
NVHLYNOf sezea[q AaaVOOVW svant NOWIS uyof
($91 “P)
SVIHLVLLVW

ALSVNACU NVAONOWSVH AHL
: VLVWWALS

778

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoisTp] osprsquie;

IIA snysonuy *f

(NOIdv) AWATOLd (souydusay) Swiajo1g — e1shg Jo [] snigy9WIaq] “z
| | sejeg Jopuexayy "1 -w TTA Awajoig “wi Jowdoyiyg SOON
[aurqnouos & Aq] LIT e22edo2]7 Aq) [eI eredoayp fq] vay enedoayy IIT e43edoap IIA Awsaoig Jordng sw2]o1g
IIIA Ausajorg ‘2 II] etedoapy *z wi ]
IA Awajoig ‘1 ‘Ww I] Buedoay “1 ws I] eedoazD “jw
II e21edoa]D (NODSAHd) Il SALAOUSNA WIA AWATOLd YOLAWOTIHd IA AWA TOLd

(1 _~__

J eaedog[p “wi

SHNVHdIdd A atone

AJ Awajoig “wu []] 2ourssy ‘wi
so1ua19g II] 90ursay BOs .e, JOPURXITY seBey YOLVdOTIHd AI AWATOLd

(

(auasd JO sedey jo 39143nep)

II snysonuy ‘Ww I] 99t¥asog “Ww T snyssdg "wi
aouasog = sny>eutsh] I SALIOUING I] AWATOLd saqanepe
{____1__,___________| |
[I 20urssy Aq] [1 Aq]
Il saities tz I] Awajoig “£ snyseutsd’y JO UOS Il sant ‘TW
] 2ouIssy “1 "Ww snunesa5 Aw2jorg *2 asnavsis jo ‘sopouiedy “2 ¢cl‘w
(SNHd TICV TIHd) sayseushy “1 ws = sajooyredy “ur Smysiawaq WA Jepuexayy “1 “ws (SANnvV wad)
B1910[1Ug Il ANAIOLd snydjapepryg [] 2ours1y = euaKODYT ¢ siewajo1g eipursé] vos & 1aFeajayy AWAIOL
Uasp]IYyD areas [ezaAas [aotuszag Aq} [221péingq Aq}

SS SSS

] 2dtualag ‘£

[ epAing *z

euUeyey “1 “Ww
snEpuayy WALOS | AWATOLd

rnd

II diptyg Jo ulsnod puodas ‘soursiy “wi ‘sndeT]

SHIWATOLd AHL

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSpquiey © sUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprsquiey

eurioineW JO AWH TO.Ld

vluelamneyy JO [] eqn ‘w

snydjapeyryg Awoo1g auajag es1edoalD sola} Japuexayy
(NOIIYSAVD) UVSUVD
AX AWA TOLd
: z div
(suoiuy <q] [sesae> Aq]
Auoly ‘w ;
YOLVdOTIHd VAHL (euseydizy) snepyory -w
AIX AWAIOLd TTX AINATOLd soulssy HWA VuLVdOYTD TA euedoayy ay aaruaiag
II] 221uasag enedoay “w ; A earedoayy “wu
1] WAGNY XATV WX Awe}oIg “WwW : (SA.LATNV) SOSANOIG SOUN
Jaiysnep & IX AWATOLd (euseyddry A esiedoayy ¢ sniday jo AWAIOLd IX AWIIOLd
IX Awzjo1g “2
X Auajorg “1 “Ww
ai z II] 221uasag enedosly
(IIT a2tuasag es1edoafD iq] [1 <q] {auiqnauod e iq] [auajag esiedoap iq) [AI Sas Sq él
XN spyponuy “b ¢ [ee ee ee ee)
XI] snysonuy °£ I]] aotuaiag esiedoapp *z (auatas) esiedoalD ‘2
IITA snyponuy °2 XI snysonuy ‘z él cw AI eaedoa[D 1 “wt
XT Awajoig “1 TTLA saysonuy “ws XT Auiajorg “1 ws 1 WHGNVXATV (SNYAHLYD
(auajas) exredoaj5 euarydds 1 (esxedo3}5) AT es1edoo|>) X AWHIOLd Il WALOS XI AWHTOLd

780

*sn3dA> 0) soay

(uoasdyd) I] $21933angq Awajoig
“eISY UT pally

pur paivajop snsse3> sniurory “g

‘dA3q s1ewW2]01g

uayeam sjazzenb snseukg
‘surgaq

BIsy UI SNIIUOIsITy JO OATYy

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoaTUE) oSpaquivey © oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquie;y

“ANG 405 vIsdnry xo] PUL
IBA DAYS VETS IsITy
jo pua pur sniztdny jo A101914,

*ssoi303d
ULE, SARS URNIIIS ISI OU,

“snsua2 ay} UO suaziD ¢zg‘git
* epuagne ajoid ap, ysaads sipy

“p140y}aq01 DIstdOg XT
“(64s
Jo ¢) suerULISN] pur 199"T[e>
24] Joao sninig sniuny “gq
“enULUWNN Joy
snueypiusay o1disg snijaus0D “g
ssydunis

“snypidog jo Jeunqya a4,

“SNYIIEIL Jo YIvIG

“SNIABIIO JO uONIsodag
“wopZury preny 243
Jo spunj ay) asn 0} yesodoid stpy
“UOISSIWIWIOD

ter -soa ‘snradwiog ‘O
{1 ‘sod ‘sna1UOp22e
SNYJIIAPY SA{IIIAeD *O

of 1-1£1 s3osua)
Snd2¥[J SNIZ]vA “]
snuvlonyy snssesy sniulry ‘g

:s[nsuoz 1€1
snipdny “d
seuar’] snipidog ‘dq
istnsuozD ze

(Snr Ostg smusndyey “7

‘uNWesI9g ‘utedg ur sem s.ordisg jo pue sme] uvrsede sip] BfOAaKIS sNiony “dq
JO snyeny Jo [im pur ywaq —- puda ay) :enULWINY Jo LON NNSIg snysovI4y ‘II JO aieunqiy :s[nsuo7) €f1
LSvVa AHL LSaM FHL ATVLI GNV JWOU SYOSNEO

HTaVL TVOIDOTONOUWHD

CNV STINSNOD ‘ILS V4

781

Ayseudp
uendAdq ay) ur uoNerIsu029y

‘(971
02) vispr prsutaosd JO UOLeZIUe3I0
ay) yim spaacoad snipjinby

“W ‘eurodiag “Wy jo yieoq

‘siydwiayy
01 uosskyg Awajoig jo uiniay
“IWOY I” paIndaxa sndtuOIsIy
:BaTUOIEIIS I SNITUOISIIY
sainided pur sa3aisaq eusadiag “Jw

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

bz1—$7z1 suStedwes uesnsry

“ANTES ay) IsulEde eTpIssEyY
wiouj jeadde :urdaq ssem a1]eD
“BIUIPIES
UI S91SAIO snyainy jo sustedwir>y

“SMSUDD YI UO SUdZIND g£L‘PGE

‘ae][9daI4 JO YOaay
‘orjpz0n04d pure diysuazio ywesd
01 odes DANIOgE SNII-J snta[ny
*JaQUIZAON,
“eIsy Joy snyinby “IW
syduiniay,

“suasdosad ap (1ulag ) viuny x7]

‘190 1 ‘sapdey ays

Jaa0 snueupny sniuosiduias “>
:ydwinisy,
‘snueipimay oldisg jo yivaq

snurayeD snnxag “>
snutduo’] snisse> “>
:s]nsuo7;
lz
“sod ‘eyplAvy snurguoyy snisseD “J
11 ‘soo ‘oidary snytasasg ‘uD
:bz1-$71 sJosuaD
snooej J sniajn “W
snaesdy sninefg “Wl
:s[nsuoZ

SaisaIO snipany “]

snpidayy snipiwoy “Ww
:s]nsuo7

BuUtD sMi{aUIOD “"]

Bplaey snurduo’y snissez “T
:s]nsuo7>

snjny sniuuy “[

SNIABIDO “UD
:s[nsuoD

snypinby *

snueupny sniuosdusag “>
:s[nsuo7t

Jayo[ng snipneyy ‘dy
ayn

eusadiag ‘JW

(221yo

Ul pasip ¢) snjniuay] snijaui07D “7
:sjnsuoz

§z1

971

Lz1

gzi

6z1

of!

782

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSpquivey © oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprsquiey

‘paivaio (sisuauoqieny)

“Turaaly au)
19A0 snqieqousyy snuwi0g “uD
‘jusaly
ay) jo Zury pur saZoiqolly
ay) Joao SnuIxeyy sniqey “O
:LLt—o71

€€1

‘soo ‘1803.4 ostg sniusndyey “7

€z1 “so>

‘snouereg snqpaiayy snspioae7 *O
:$10SU97)

oqiey snide “5

sayueW ‘d

{Ned suidjesuesy jo aauraoig savak ureyzaoun ur sydwnisy, :s[nsuo7) ovr
“spur[s] ouvaeg (snaiZoiqol[y)
“sniuog ay) JOJ snpaIaY snrp193eD “O snunixepy sniqey ‘>
jO A Salepiy Ny JO uoneuissessy syduiniy 7, sniwidg “y
1z1'9 “SnYyd2¥I4) “> JO Yeap pur AIF :s[nsuo’7) v1
22q
‘eIUIPIeS JOJ saIsaICO snysmny “]
‘sueun3ry]
J2A0 SAUIATED sniIxag “>
‘aenxag aenby jo uonepuno, syuduiniay, sniuue.y >)
‘OT1-T71 ‘uonesIZa] Sty Jo UOTIENUTUOT snqieqousyy snnmwog ‘uD
‘sIUM UBIUJaATY pue s30Igo][Y —*SNYdI"ID “> Jo areuNqrn puosag :s[nsuoz wz
‘219 suenary]
JIAO SNIDdE[J SHAN “
sydwiniy
(271 30) patsfpr ap vrsqny x77
aypyiats ap onvdoy
Sipunjadas op
sngavjnsuos susuiaosd ap
anjosiuaaiinzars orsipny sind wm
isp pisutaosd ap
prapjusunss
p1sp49D
wantats ajiqva ap xay
ssnysoeI snururwepy snnzuingd “1
“snq[aiapy Aq enuatjog pur ewyed jo sainseaw jedisung zz1-€z1 — (snotzeteg) snqjarayy snufiaae “OD
jo vonepuno} :susteduied seajeg *snydoeIQ “> JO ayeunqiy 3s31j :s]Nsuos) €z1
LIsvd FHL LSAM AHL ATVLIGNV JNO’ SUOSNAD

ANV STNSNOD ‘ILS Vd

783

“($11 30) amtdusa vag yoe[g sty
asinboe 03 surgeq pue adouts 38
Jamod sazias [A savepiyuyy F119

‘auaidZD ul uoldy Awafo1g
ssnidd> ul zapuexapy Aw2[01g
‘Imog Awa[oI1g
pue [J] exedoaj>D jo ana Lo1—gi
uooskyg Awajoig jo yieap :aunt

‘aa329ap Aisouwe
dewajorg tekox aya puudy gz

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

“BIIID) Je DIDESSEL DY,
‘aquury aya Aq EBIa10Ny
1v Ouey snsrideg jo 1ajaqV
“SIB MY NIQUIIT 101-F11

‘sae ystueds 111—b11

“Was 140597 JO VOTSSTUIWOD
:surdaq waqosd auryinsnf{ ay.

-sudieduies
uvlingry pue uenewyeq

“papunoy
snnieyy oqien jo Auojoz

“stead AUeul JO}
aoeIy_L pue eluopacdeyy UI SIE AY

“STEISIA
ainsasoid 02 vavonpeg x77]
“SNSUID dy? UO sUaZIUD Of EPGE

‘pauueg saouewz0j13d
a3eis pue peaousar s1ojeuas z¢
“wre
ay? JDAO shaNedg sNIpWay “WW
:yduniay

“Iaquiazaq ‘1u301g

sainBr] ay) J9A0 xay sndseyy *—

“SUETIEW[EC 242 13A0

sndnewy]aq snaIapy saiypioaeD “J
ssydwany

“UOISSTLIWOD-PURT IY JO YOM
ay Suipua ‘ersps3p vts0y I 8 X7T
‘amnpasoid [21019219
UO MF Sty :auNqI snueW ‘D>

snuluosae’y OSIg sniusndyje> “7
snsniq sniary ‘Ww
is]nsuolZ
oqiey sniideg ‘up
sniiesde snjparapy SMUuTI99e> “>
:sjnsuos
O1eD snid10d “D
snq[eg safioy “We
ss[nsuo7
zz
“sod ‘snqieqouayy snimwio0g ‘uy
ét1 ‘soo
SNIVWIPLIC] SNI[HI9] SNIPIIVVD “T
ib1i-$11 s10suay
SNI[IIDAY SNIPIIIVD “I
sningos sniypway ‘jw
‘s[nsuos

SNUINGY SNUIXE SsNIqe.y “CS
Blac) sNIUITT “D
:s[nsuoz

angny ay, efoaavrs snronyp ‘O
sniewapeiq snja1ayp_ snipisae7 “J
:sjnsuoz
xoY sn 'O
01k> snidI0g ‘W
:s_Nsuos
BNOD sniaINy “J
(snonewy]aq)
SNIPAI2Y sNpIOIeD “TT
is[NsuotZ

€11

bil

git

gli

611

ssnid4> ul

sajns 1910g Awajoig “Jopurxayy

Awajorg qm Aputol 1d43q sana
ILI e33edoaq> 101 03 6390 ‘Lor

“SOPIWODIAT
pue sayeprypy Aq ewoseydeg
30 voINeg Lo1—goi "2

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSprquivey G UIUC sovoIsTp] osprquie;y

"ESOJOL 3e SjNEL)

Aq paieajap snut3uo7q snisse5
‘eyuan3n[

sUIVse PULLUWOD sd¥z) SIE PY

ayIng eNWY BA ML

"[NED UI sasiaAaI ULWOY
“eyuinsaf
qsulede pUEWWO? Saxe) SNIFDIaW

‘eyzindn{
0) Awe snurqiy Jo JopuazINg

“BAISSEIA

jO Japinus sip] ‘awoy 03 sdaumnol
pur ensog 0} ssapuazins eynsn[

‘eM suns for—111

"3990190 ‘uredg

Jayinj 3200 o1dae7 snsptaiag **

sqduinis yp
‘D140 ]]9qD] DYID7) Xa]

“Ie Ay BuTyINBNf{ oy Ut

JINPUOD J9AO FijimMopAy oxsionb eal

“u3iso2 0) ape sem snINedIS
pue ‘parp snsaiqy JOsua> ayy

“At ‘SURIUOPZIRW PUe 19SIPIOIS

942 J9AO SnSNIG SNIATT ‘W
syduinis y
‘ABp ules ay] UO

‘aoeIU | 20} SNIaI2FY sNIpIIIe>) “D

“BIUIPIeS

JOJ SNIPPID|W SAIIIIeD “WL
syudwinis 7,

‘suIdaq

Jem aury2ingnf 2y2 yo 22npuod
ay? 3900 ANAL UEDIUAIT
“o1s0430 Xay

snuey ‘D
snuj3uo'y snisse> “Y
sspMsuo-)
O11 ‘sod ‘Bary snIUIT “D
Ott 'SOD
‘snuingy snuxeyy sniqe.y ‘OC
:sJ0SUa7)
sninvs¢g snijany ‘W
days
(paumapuos) snisusw0H “Je
eqjed sniaidyng “32g
is[nsuo7y
Z11 ‘SO9 ‘snsn3cy sMATT "WW
$11 "sod ‘sninedg snirwoay "Wy
:$10SU37)
snueyis (snuny) ‘W
(snarprumy)
Snq[a12W sArIZ9e> *S
‘s]nsuoD
snuiqyy sarunisog ‘dg
snjny snonuy "W

:s]NSUO7

ensag sniuindje> “J

ordezag

BIISEN Otdias stpaur07 “gq
:$[NsuoD

lot

gor

6o1

LIt

LSVa AHL

784

LSAM FHL

ATVLILANV INOY'

SYOSNAD
GNV STOSNOO ILS V4

785

1d ABq Jo [I] e2Iedo2/>D jo yeaq

‘a0Ry UT SUsteduies sMIpIg “1
‘saaeuid very 242
suede sudiedused sniuoiuy "

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

*2e[[2279 A,
1B TIqUIT>) 24) 1940 AI0191A,

‘aenxag senby
ie squoInay, ay) 12A0 410191 A,

‘zol—fol “Jey URIULISNT

"101-Pol

‘JEM PALS ULI[IIIG puorag IU],
*101-vol

‘suSiedwes duquiy sneyy
‘oIsnery 18 WqUaID ay)

4q snijew pue odars jo wajaq

‘eyinanf jo ainidep

“BSOfO] JO pjogs, au3
sa4¥2 Osje ay ‘esofoy, sayei Ordar7

‘IaqUBID ay? JaAO SNIMIeD “O
*sauomnda]
pur quiry ay) Jaa0 SnieP ‘D
:syduiniz
‘ary Advrid, UL
‘(pot 10)
Sipunjadas ap (an1mn0jD) viprasag x77]

‘(001

Jo) 4opsawus ap iandd py xz]

“SUEIZIIA SNULYY

0) ¥IIIJY Ul pur] Jo WawUsIssy
“snurumnies JO aieUNqII3 ISI]
“SUjopsaIvs ap PIO” X77
“nJouas ap BISSDD XT]

‘ue 1 ‘eyundnf Bury pur

sUvIPIWNNY 94) J9AO sneW “>
sudunisy,

asndny ‘sueiely yy pur 1stpr0jg
ay Jaco snyny snionulpy “Wy
“eyuingdn(
Sury pue suviprwngy sy) 1240
SNIIPIWNN snifaapy snypi9ae>D “OD
ssydwniy
“sipunjedas ap viprasas XT

snyinby «Wi
A suey ‘>
*s[nsuoy
£11 ‘sod
‘snuseides snypaiayy sniptdae5 “9
Gor “soo
SNIIPIUINA SNyalayy SNIpldIIe> “SO
:1O1-ZOL S1OSUay
snjniey snaviny ‘*
A! stew ‘D
:s]nsuoZ

salsaIQ snyainy ““}

HT sasey >
:s[nsuoz

enquiry sntAr[y “>

IT sniew >
:s[nsuoz

SNUUITXE AY sniyeW ‘uD

snjny snyany “g
:$]nsuo7

snuvssag sniny ‘D
ordaes sniptazag ‘=
isjnsuoz

101

zor

fo1

Poi

Sol

go1

786

‘saaesydng
ay? 18 SAOAUD URIYUEg
sigau1 pue emopeddey wosj
SurmespyuA Our saieply yy
SIMEIIAO EIDI{ID JO [NsuOIOId
se eng :2z/£6 pur 9/L6 usamiag
“2WOY 01
idk3q saava] Jopuexspy Awajoig
‘2WOY
01 9uaI47 saavat uordy sulajoig
‘eluauZY jo Bury | soues3Ty,

“SIEM URIIAQNIa £6-g6

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

‘uel ‘erueisny pue uredg saying
JIAO EL[aqe[OG snI[auIO7 “"]
z:yduinis 7,
“PIPICY P1f1900) XPT

“eIUOPIZP JO} SNIPI| “L
‘saveitd aya J9A0 sniuOWwY “JW
isydunisy ¢
“snutumies
pue wonels jo Surysud| pue ms
“on1f0) 0480 ap ‘stpuainpap
$11U0j09 ap ‘vravjuauindf 528ay
“snuIUINIVS JO aeUNqIII puora¢

snul3uoT] snisse7 ‘>

snqieqouayy snniwog ‘uD
:sjnsuo7

66 ‘soo ‘sntuoiuy ‘W

001 ‘SOD ‘sndd"I,F SNI2[BA "Ty
:96-L6 siosua7

snsseit) smrUIoIy “q

snjniuary] snijaus07) “Us
:s[nsuoz

snipid ‘1
sodan snyaiayy smupi9ae7 ‘OD
:s[nsuo7)
snuiq]y sniunisog "y
snuolwy "jy
:s[Nsuoz

SNIIEL] SNIZIEA "T

IA snieyW ‘D
:$[NSUOT

oor

i eS SSeS

LSVa FHL

LSaM AHL ATVLIGNV INO’

SYOSNAD
CNV SINSNOD‘ILSV4

“JEM
DNepiuy Uy Isuy ay jo Juruuisag

~
oo
~

*snjJUuOg UO spies
anu Kays :onb snjzojs 2301893 03
SJIUOISSIUIWOD Saye) sNITTINbY “Wy
‘erudyiig Saye saepayuyy
pue eopeddesy sayei souvs3iy,

“eudqug
JO saiadrany sapaworiny jo yIVIq

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIOATUE) OSprquiey © oUTTUGC sovoisTp] osprquie;y

‘aq 42% ‘uinjnosy
3200 OgeNS sniadwog ‘uD
sydwunisy
‘Stuppodsups[ ap otaduog xr]
‘piatdod PUnDt, x77
“ouesy
sniuordwasg ‘y jo 3urysud]
“IEP [BIOS 242 UI ‘932 ‘eTINS
‘oqeng sniaduiog jo s21s0191A,
“Opuvp ajoj1ats ap DIN] x7]
roweag snmi2AQ 3surIEse sniNY
pug snizeyy jo aa3eq :aun[ 11
“p10 A ausaonb su
‘uin[nosy 38
ardesseul :suIdaq eA [eII0G ou]
“snsniq jo uolevurssessy
“Sarye aya 304 diysuaziis
‘(payjnuue inq passed) sarznl
JO UONNINsUODaI PUL aIeUaS
01 sajmba yo vowppe ‘eruojuaunsf
xa ‘mney ueerde :spesodoad sipy
‘snsniq sniary “yy jo azeunqi LT

“sr0134I
uney Surssaiddns i1pa jetsosua)

‘oun z1 ‘suetueisny]

24) J9A0 SNsseID sNTUITy] “g

‘aunf o1 ‘iaqnya5

ays 39A0 uredg 303 ([]) sIPI “L
ssydumniy,

“DIINAL Dminy xrT

06 ‘sod ‘sesaeZ snifNy] “J
£6 ‘soo ‘snsseiZ sniulory ‘g
:g8—6g szosuaD
(uoNde Ut party) OD snidI0g “T
oqusig sniadwog ‘uD
:s[nsuoz 68
Qoayns ou ang ‘uonse
Ur payf4) sndny snyany -q
Jesse SNINy “J
:sjnsuoz 06

JESIeD SNI[N] “xag
snddytyg snisszeyy “J
:s[nsuo7z 16
$6 ‘soo ‘snss¥az snqutary 7]
96
*so> ‘snqieqouayy snnwog ‘UD
isJOSUSD)
vusodiag "Ww
ayo[ng snipnel) “D
:sjnsuo7 76

SNIUUSIZqY W

SNII¥I.J SNIIVA “D
‘sinsuoz £6

snqieqouayy snaiwog “T

snp[®) snijso.) “>
:snsuo7 66

BOAIEIS SHIN! "O

SNSS¥I> SNIUIDT] “7
:s[nsuo7 $6

788

‘eIsy Sulztuedso snsaydg Iv ens
‘(awoy

3 poynes yOu) snuepseq jo Aieasy,

"eIsy ul sudteduies s equity

“snejayssiy
pur eng jo suonenosan,
‘wISy
ul equity Aq parapsnur sn3seL.5
“‘snuswoyrO
pur vauosaeyy jo sapeg

‘suayy JO [led

“snaviig pue
suayry jo adais :999935 Ul eIINS

‘aoeyd sty sayes (snz4yie7T)
I] 3910g Awajo1g :suepurxeTy
aya Aq paidala sapuexary Awe[oig

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

*SMSU9D 2YI UO $UIZINID Coo‘ f Ob

“PEIN
apassadns 01 paiurodde sno2e[4

*($g 10) snueipnesy
SNIZLY “J JO Ips erouruy sy]

“‘MWOY JO Surye) pue adais UL
* QINUEIARIIO WINI[Ag, 2U.L
*saqiaa oy) Te Ut
suaznid mau ayi ind 03 yIIq s,euuID
“YSWY IY} 1OJ saavy eI[NS
*(purwu0s umouyun
uv 103) ‘idag ‘ene, sniasas “g
syduinis
“BOY 0} S2ay sey
“aU1saUsoD SIFT] DWOSE
“WWOY Sazias eI[NS

oqzey snizideg ‘uy
If] euUr snijour0y “]
:spnsuo7) Sg
26 ‘sod ‘eusadiag “W
16 ‘soa ‘snddijtyg snisaeyy “TT
:$g—98 siosua7
snooepy sniaje, “TJ
s199yNs
(uef £1 parp) T1A snuey “D
IJ PUUrD sntjauz05 “T
:sjnsuoZD 98
BNI SNIPPUIOD “T
SBUUID JO} AYyNS
(se1s04
¥ pale[sap) euUtD sNI]aUI075 “T
(a2qyo ur pay[Ey) snIAwIICQ ‘UD
isjnsuo7Z Lg

‘sored “snueyy 02
JO 91NzZIas :9999TD UI snejaysiy pULUIWO? sNEpIyIP! 2Y42 2013 01
‘sapoyy Jo adaIs pue soqiz3 ay) ye Suowr suazs9 snyny sntadwog ‘=
*suayiy jo UONI3jaq Mau 3y3 aprarp 01 ‘dsa ‘snioidjns (xI]2J) BI[NS snIPaUIO> “TJ
‘eIsy Ul SUPWOY JO aJIUssEyy “A JO S][Iq URIDTUNqI) sy :sjnsuoz 88
LSVa AHL LSAM AHL ATVLIGNV 4WOU SUOSNAD

GNV STNSNOO‘ILSV4

789

idA3q jo auoimy
ay? sayea (sai2[n Vy) [TX Awafoig

dh3q
02 [] J9=puexa,y Aulajo1g spuas
RNs ‘snshywey] Awajorg Jo yw3aq

‘tg—fg ‘solepusyUyy
qsurede sudiedues s eusmnyy

“Tat My Sep) puooss, aL

“snqivqousyy snmiWwog siz pue
“eyINg J0j voIgyy Sr2A0901 Aaduog

“OQseD Si pue
‘e][Ng 10} ApioIg sz9A0991 Aaduiog

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

"RIOWY jo snisoy jo (RL
“BION JO Hed
‘saroensiSew BurussduO. s2[Ny
-SOUSHIDia jnoqe SMVT
-aonjtaduad
souotssaonb aut JO voNeZNeWIIShg
‘soisood vinungrss JO Buiqin>y
‘218Uag 01 saytnba Jo UoIssIUpY
:somnseow jediourd seins
*s[neD pure woqn[sD
2Yy2 J9AO SNdIE],J SNIIEA “]
‘SOepHUW
Jaao wUaIN SNIUDT] “]
“yorepy ‘snudepy sntoduiog ‘uD
‘uel ‘sarepryaryy
J2AO XIPIJ BING snipaus0D “7
sydunisy

‘JBM ay) UT PrT[Iy s[nsuod yiog
‘aisauaesg JO [ey
*suondiz2so1g
“AON 1 {9284 BUTJOD ay) Jo apieg
‘aisauseig jo 23315
‘sayuues
Jo aiaesseur :snqzodis9¥g jo apneg
suredg
01 saay snisouag Joie ayy,
“Ajeay ur spurt eying :8uuds

“MAN IINSUOD Sn{DUaS
Aq parapio saqizi ay) [je Suowe
suaznia Mau ay) JO VonNqisiq

SNIg SNIP SNUPIIIeF “OH
IT *f9J BINS SAypaus0OD “T
:s]nsuo;

BIaqe[oG snifauIO0> “uD
Bindad santa L “Wo
:s]nsuo7
snooze J snisa[eA “T
19SJOH{ JO Jaaseyy
XTPA PINS SAISUIOD “T
11018191Q]
snooepq snayea “T
:3SJOP{ JO Jase
88 ‘SOD “xIfaJ B[Ns snyausoD “J
11018291]
OOL "sod ‘sndd¥f,F SNIITA “T
:x91J91U]
II 992e5 sniideg ‘up
(zo1un{) snizeyy “D
is[nsuoZ
SNUEqION ‘D
snonersy O1diag snipsuz07 “T
:s]NSUOD
Qaayns
Ou :paytty) AT euuTD snysuz0D “7
[I] 093¥5 snisideg ‘uD
is[nsuoZ

£8

12°

saiestd 343
isuiv3e sudteduivs sniuoiwy ‘jy

‘(bL Ajze2 30) swoy 01 Wopsury
Sty SOAvoT EIUAYIIG JO S<PAWOIIN

‘swoy Aq paxauur suarh5

‘paynes snuepseq jo

29¥9q 24) 303 02 sats saIepUYNW
“SLagl *eIoutD,

ul BneA SNIpAIIg ‘g jo sudedurry

‘uredg ur apn ayy uiny
01 uldaq snTjaiayy pure Aadwiog
“(PL Bursds 30) saaepuyaip pue
SNIJOIag Uss9MI9q SUONLNOZINy
‘eUOsag pur Os9NS jo sapIVg
“Tena
ay2 JO syIvap :e1AOdag jo aueg

“BOTT EI]
Ie SNID[NAIFY SIajap snqpr12I
*si30139g Aq OINe] JO 4D"S

auidjesuvs y ul 3JoAaI sassoiddns
ureds 03 Aem 943 Uo Aaduiog

‘euradiag “Ww Aq paurol
turedg jo [o11U0D UT sntI01I9g

“PAT PUe PrIwajop snUlATe +)
“snizoias isulede ‘saou1Aosd
ystuedg om ay) Yam ‘snutales

sniiwog "W pur sntg snypa2yw

‘puewiwios aiesid ay) sniuoluy

“ZW pure spuewuos snepYyNy
uaald eNoD puE snynony]
ssnoturiddg jo [ets

“snnouin?)
“J Jo vonese uemunaiyy,

‘2o1yo Joy
10j puis 03 sauNqiz jo 14313
2y1 Burso0ysa1 ajo ouyampy x7]
“S11DuLsD Snqiutusog ta ap
snqpnony ‘py soyaesd aya jo 191py
‘aqeunqiy 243
jo ssamod [Ny Jo UOTIeIOISAI 105
SNIUIDIS Jo UONENTE UEIDIUNgI

untsaguat persads & yA
uredg ur puewwos uaar3 fadwiog
‘snanig sniuny “Wy sy Aaduiog
pur ‘snpideq jo uonsaiinsul
ay) umop ind snjniep pus
ay :Aaduiog 103 wnrsadus jeisads
‘(LL 10) eruopaseyy
10} ETJaqQuIOG snITaUIOD “UD
sqduinssy,
“snpiday]
[Nsuos ay Aq unZaq uonsezInsuy
“BI[NS JO [eIIUNJ ajvIS puE YL
“Gorey “ejy
103 ([]) snudeyy sniadusog ‘uD
:qduinisy,
‘QEIIOIL[OA PUE BlUJISoY JO [Ie]

82207) snyaIny “Ww
snyjnan’y snuiory “J
:s[nsuo7z

B02 snyainy ‘D>
SNIAEIIO “J
isjnsuozD

o1n7) sntuoquias “>
SNIAEIIO ‘UD
:s[nsuoZ

snuziary snpiday] snipway ‘wep
sninsg sniun] ‘q
ss[nsuoZD
6L ‘soo ‘19y9[Ng snipnyyy ‘dy
:X9II91U]

“SUOIID9[9 Je]NSuOD ON

snimieD snneiny “‘O
snpiday sniyuay “Ww
:sjnsuoZD

zyoI[Ng snipe ‘dy
(snoinesy]) BEA SNIIAIIS “g
is[nsuoz

ee ee

LSVA AHL

LSAM AHL

ATVLIGNV ANOW

SUOSNAD
ANY STNSNOD ‘ILS VA

79%

‘SsIBPUyUA

JepuarINs 03 saUIpPep sourIZIL
‘eIsy jo aoutaorzd aya jo

Jal[as 242 203 sainseaw $sny[non]

“uayei susimy pur sdouig
‘sguesdty Aq 23943 play st
pue euawisy 02 soay sazepl yu

*snqUOg UT SNITNON’] JO sa108191 A,

*snoepudyy aya jo apaieg pue
saynony “7 Aq snaizd7y Jo Jayay
‘surdaq
APM WEPwIyUW PINLL, UL

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

‘hadwog
Aq wieap 03 and eusadiag
“W fsnioyag jo uONeUIssessy

*A[IDIg JO JOUIIZAOB sorta 1L—EL

*snSUd2 94) UO suazIII2 C00'016
*sJoleuas 9 Jodxa sJOSUaD BU.
“SaJIIA JO [eT
‘14 ap DUINDI XTTe
“pravisipmt (904{0D) vYjainpy x77]
‘a1eunqisi Jo ssamod q]e Surs01sas
Ayjeuy orursry oraduog x77
‘(snisouas *3t) uieds
403 (11) snudey sniadwog ‘uD
‘(snisousag *3"1) ureds
JOJ SNIg SNI[II2W sNtI99eD *O
‘Issog 24] JaA0
snyjnony] ose A snnusjay “Wl
:syduinis
‘snoeqeds
JOAO SNSSEIZ) SNIUIDTT “I
:uOoneAO
‘snaviiedg jo yivap pur 1v339q
“suRIUEpJeqd
ay2 J9A0 OND snUOqtIS “>
sydunis L¢
‘snoeyedg isurede puewwos
ay) Uaard snsses7> sniuory “Wy
“snoeiseds
Aq paieajap sjnsuos y10g
“(a1 H1a19 ap) vYjausoD vYpaD XT]
“snoeiseds
JO YOaay ay jo Suruurdag
‘Ajddus
uler3 uO vISso> o1fuasa] XT]
‘Jo.RY_ SNIUINT]
*- JO uONeNse UBIDIUNGIEL
‘suelines[ 942 1200
(snoisnes]) eneA snitAlas “g
:ydwiniry

zL ‘sod ‘ejoaqngd snijay “7
zL ‘sod ‘snueIpoyD
snjnquay] snijauso> “uD
:69-0L si0sua7y
SNSSEID SNIVIDIT "WW
snudey; sniadwog ‘uD
:sjnsuoy of

sa3saJO saipyny “UD
ving snjnjua’] snipauz05 “gq
:s[nsuo7) iL

snuvipo[D
snjnjua‘] sntjauso> “us
FOIA SMY[PD “T
:s[nsuo7) ze

snUuIZuO'] snisse7) “>
snyjnon] O13e A snnuaI2y ‘WW
:$]NSUO7) Ll

19?

“snseoney
aya ur ustedures s Aaduiog

“sipunjedas ap parunboe surpney
*(paumboe) snijauso7 ‘5 pue
(pauurspuod) snipe, “> jo spetsy,

gl ‘sod ‘sniniep snneiny “6
:S1OSUX)

smenbioy snyuey, “7

81107) snijainy “T

“BOUIID) DY) O} Saay saIepIy IU *(b9 10) srursZosad ap ordog xr] :S[NSUO7) $9
-Azaqiaq 10} paizaja-uou pazepsap
‘sniaeg sntuozmny ‘g pure ens
Snt]auIO. ‘g ‘21eUsIsap sjnsuo7
‘eIUaWIY JO JapuarINs sayxeI (,Aodestdsuoz
pus saepiyuy] sivajap dadwog UBIILUI[BED 3SItJ, 24.1)
“eyed YUM iuawoaI3e s Kadwog ‘sareplIy Wl sUIVse puEWwWOD SHIN snnezoA “T
kadwog 3urard ‘snypueyy snpiday snipumay "Wl
“2 auNIn) oy jo PymuEW xa] :s[nsuoz 99
“S1JD4 DIG] DINO XI]
:0yIO SNIIsoY “] JO aeunq |,
‘sayerid ay? isurede fadwiog
oO) wnisadus SunuesZ ouiqory
ssaresid xrT ismiurqey “Y JO areunquy
ay? isurede udieduses s,Aaduiog ‘uannjod sad wnjupa NIG MOT[O}
-ersopeddey sraaozas saurs3aty, sioiav3d Buryew vi7aus0D xa]
‘Raz pue ‘prBap1arad Uo ‘soieis UBTaIO} ONgEy snypy "AW
Ww SUBEWOY sIvajap SaIepIy Ny 02 suv] UO ‘sHy1quv UO sjesodoid osig sniuindyey ‘5
‘sn{jnon‘] jo uotssaszadng ISMI[IUIOD “> JO aeuNqIIL, :sjnsuoZ lo
“Dayns JoywNy ON
enea*
‘soaesid aya asurede :(aayyo
dIaID UI sNJaIaP *O Jo ustedusey Sury4e3 aJ0Jaq palp inq) 32ayns
*snqUuog O1 sUINIAI saIepIyUpy xoy snisep ‘OD
“SIQISIN Jo amnade7y (a2yyo
‘wUaWwIY UL poip) snjjaropy SNIPII9eD “J
‘NUT snynony jo usredurey :s[NSUOD 89
sutedg 303 13n34 ostg snidng “W (snonazD) snqjaxopy snypi9aeD *O
“eqsaI0URIBI] JO apyeg :19q0190, “sniuRayy “J é snjewop] snisuswop “O
‘BIUSWIY “S JO UOISEAUT sny;NIN-] ssydwnizy, :s[nsuoZ 69
Lsva aHL LSAM FHL ATVLIQNY AWOU SHYOSNAD

ANV STINSNOD ‘TLS Vd

793

“2WOY
0) susnjaz Aodwiog :39qwi220q
*quauaqiag usaiseq, s,Aadwog

‘saeprzyiyy jo yIvaq

‘hadwog
02 Wayesnsaf 50 [ey 1290199

‘awoy Aq esd jo
uonexouue pur ‘e13shs ut Aaduiog

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSpquiey G UIUC sovoisTp] osprquiey

"[NeD sdeVIW HNIDA]>2}7 B42 6$—09
“smstaory Aq pazeajop mnpoy au.L

‘uredg us21s24\ Ut
sesaey snot yo sudtedwey 09-19

‘[Ned ouridyesues |
ur sodorqolly ay2 isurede
snundwog ‘D jo sudiedwep 19-79

‘3¥SaBD pur snssesy ‘Asdmiog
JO ayesAWINI] ISIE, WL

‘sjesodoad ueses3e sniaryy “]
‘adag ‘souvs31y,
pur sarepiyriyy ‘saivsid
32A0 (Aq) SnudeP sniadwog ‘uD
sydunisy,
‘aBa|I39eS 30} SNIPOTD ‘g JO [BIL
“(savesid ay *3'1) 22935 10)
sndnaszD snya1ayy sntp199"D “OH
:yduinisy,
‘Qui[neD jo yivaq
“WN14D49P QQ) UI S{[IG JO
usodap Suiinbas 2russ-] vtuny x77
‘nas :Koeitdsuoy
UBIZBUT[IED DY 13990199,
“BIUDWsY pue
sniuog 30} snyNon-T snwiry “]
:ydunisy,
“snuix ou
xaftjuod apeus sesaeD sniynf{
“MUNGIAD Op BINT X77]
“snisiqey JO [es]
“CANE BEUNY, 242) 2yrasas oneFoy

“sudayjos ap winjynsuos snjouas

*olsajtuew suepedsues |,
sty pue Id43q jo uonexouue

3] JO} snssesy) jo yesodosg

sniuesyy “7

32]F SNI]DI2;y sMIpID9eD “H
:s[nsuo5

umouyun

uv pur %9 "SOD ‘3¥So¥D SNI[N] “7
:$30SUX)

JOTIN EPfessap! snU2IeA “Wh

snuerusndye

13n3,j ostg sridng “yw
:sinsuoD

BUSINA SNIUINT “]
snugfig sniuny ‘q
:s[nsuoz

epaqiH sniuowy “>
03991) SUTIN “W
isinsuoD
(parestpqe Aay2) umouyun
uz put $9 “soo ‘e105 snifainy “]
is30SUd>)
snjn31j sniaseyy “5D
sesoeZ sniyny “7
:s[nsuoZ
(snsua2 ay 3unajdwos
INOYIAM PrIEI1pge s3OsuUad 942)
ol ‘soo ‘snssesD SMUT] “

794

‘sudjedwied uraequy
pur ysimaf para snjurqesy
‘d43q 03
sarainy Auiajo1g sazojses sntTUTqesy

‘uSredure>
ysima[ puovas snturqesy

-udteduies ysimaf
:B13hg JO aie[nsuosoid sniuiqesy
“sniddy saziurZi0 o1e>

“(L$ 10) awoy
02 saiajny AwiajOrg jo 1431/4

‘ uewoy indod
snotue 19 snidos, se (saiajNy)
IX Awajorg jo uonudsos2y

‘uyeIg Us Uy) pue ‘Ja}DUa],
pue saiadis¢, aya isurede sesoeD

“TUOWY

puv noua, ay) IsuTESe JesaeD

“MAJIN

ay) pue seBjag aya isurese IesoeD

“smstaouy
PUE INaA[a}] ay] IsUTETE IeSae-D

“snqiaipnt ap viafuag x77]

“SHIH OP OS op PNT Xa
‘pueuwod szesae>
jo uorsuarxa :2rursy oradiaog
x7] ‘snssevip pur fadwog

JO} SPULLIWIOD :eruogasT XI]

‘snss¥3Z
pue Aadusog 303 diysjnsuos
puodas & aInsud 0} se OS sUONIDa]9
Je|NSUOD 9Yy1 YDO}{ sauNqI |
* Bon'] JO 2dUaTayUOD, ay :pudy
‘[NVS UT SI1J0}91A
sJesoe.) 103 orsoayddus Kep-61
“sPhouuo
puns saataza1 Kadwiog :SiS{19 urerc)
“OIIITD Jo uINIDY
“Pax2019
Sting ‘[[X Awajorg a101sa3
0} puewwos uaald snimUsy “g
“snadA7y 01 O182Z “]Nexd 02 AVSIe-D
“or931Z Jo 1434
"219 ‘pravjuaunsf
‘susBayyos ap ‘sansays aiqv2
ap SMR ‘SNIPO[D “dq JO aleunqiy,
*12]9D SHIpPI2}{ JO YIVAG
‘sqajd 02 snjpoy “g Jo sajsuery,
"1esaeZD snijn{ 02 purwwo0s
afeg Butais oye, xe]
"$]9811U09 Xe] INUISY
JO VOISsIuIIS pUL IUdUID;I10s
usaisea s,Aoduiog jo vonayney
“sipunjadas ap
‘a0140480 ‘snyouas S190 ap avyny saTa]

“S09 ‘293In] BlpEssapy snIeA “WH
1b$—~S$ szosua

LI snssexy snrurry “Wy

I] snuSeyy smradusog ‘uy
:s[nsuO}

JOSIN Efpessayy sniz2zVA “WW
:X9II9IU]

saddipiyg snizeyy “J

Snut][a2Ie yy

sn[nuay] snijausoD ‘Uy
:s[nsu07D ss

9s
soday snypaIay snipi2aeD *O
Jayiuidg snpnquay snipau10D “g
‘s[nsuo.
snyurqed “Vy
Snuruosae) OSIg snruindey “7
is[nsuoD Ls
8s

sninqig snrusndyeD “pW
1es3ey Snijny 9
*s[Nsuo7)

isvd gaHL

LSHA AHL

ATVLIGNV JNOU

SUYOSNAD
ANV STIONSNOO ILS V4

795

‘avylie)
iv snssei> JO Ylvap pur ivajaq

“eIsapy jo aanide>y
"BIAOBIID Jo aueg

*x120193UID10 4 Jopun
DDUENTTE DEH 1933 ayi :191UIp\

“saUOINGY 231 Isulese sassoj
2[NS UT 2atsuajap dy] UO IeS2zD
‘UEIg
ul uStedwies puodas $,sesae7)

“eIsaty 3@ AIOIOIA
$,1esae7) 103 ors09ddus Kep-or
* SIUNQIII Val aYI JO MET, TUL
‘suouiaoad ap pur 10 ap sada
Suripnjour voneysi3a] s,Aadwog

‘nIS PUL Lind YI JO Burs4

“SMIPO[D JO yreap pur ,rzI[IAOg
Jo apeg, ay) ‘uel ur :3unony

*z$ 10} paidaya
aiam saiesisideus OU Urede Ing
‘Play suonsala sam awoY
01 pauinias Aadwiog uaym AUG
‘Ipny JO Sia SNOJaUINN

‘OUI pue snipo[D sapun Sunory

‘reak sty}
SUOIID9[9 JE[NSUOD OU :s[NsuOD
ays saieattduy pepueos [es0192/q
*sado1gorlTy
ay z2a0 snundutog “5
sydwniy
“ern Jo yeaq
"e1hS
10} S9A¥I] SNSSEIZ JaQUIZAON
“SatIOIDIA
S$,JBSIED 10} o1svddus Kep-or
‘anzeay) s Aaduiog jo vonesipaq
‘Dia ‘DIO Y BILD xo] 4

(Qasn8ny wo) essen
oidiag snig snail snipi9av7 *O
(snjos iszy
ie) [[[ snudepy sntodusog “up
:s[nsuos
snraidjng “136
19
"sO ‘J9BINY ET[essapy SNIIeA “WY
snpiday] snipwoy “yw
1B UMOUY :saSaII9IU]
snyny epessapy sniza[e, “Wy
snurale) sniiwog “uD
:(Aqnf/ w023) stnsuoD
BIISEN
ordiag snid Sn{faIoWy SNI[I33e7) oO
19
"$09 ‘193IN ET[Essay] SNIIIEA “WY
338 UMOUY :sadaII9IU]

aya[ng snipnep “dy
snqieqouayy sniiwog “J
:s[nsuoz

6L
"$09 ‘snd1INeS] BNEA SNI[LAIag “g

£$

796

‘eredoaD YUM UOSTET S,Jes9uz
pue ,wnuipuexsry wnyiag, 24.

‘hadwog 30 Japinyy

“(eHITID)
aoutaodd sry Ut 039917 02 Ararxue
ue :e11h¢ JO UOISEAUT URIYIIEG

‘ILA enedoap

pure [ITX Awaoirg 4q parsayur

Mou auoIW) UENdASY ay)
(saraqny) ITX Awajorg jo yaeaq

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

‘idk3q 03 esa¥D :19G0190
WHI

01 2uazh> WoO saydzeW O1eD

dk3q 01 saay Aadwog

“snjesieyg jo seg asn3ny

“eOIsZY Ur OND sdes) Awse s eqn{

“epzaqy JO aye
“eIISsepy JO adaIS

‘uinuNpoTax() jo ainjde7z
‘TOVAOT[ag 9y2 ISUTESe avsae_

‘snsidy 10} YO sias resaeD UsIyL
“SOTIXD jo uInjoI
PUL IqQaP 50 jar[az 103 saInseayy
‘[NSUOD se UO!IDI]9 UMO
Sty 39A0 sapisaid pur JoIeI91q se
suinjaz uay) ‘ureds 01 assy Jesaez
“AleI
aavgy ‘Aadwog pur ‘sjnsuoo ayy
‘uooiqny ayi ‘uel or
‘mas uef £
“asnyjes Surpnyaut ‘oxeuag
ayi woly suorsjndxa snosowinN
"21781 ay) Aus, 03 Aadwiog sadin
SNIJI2IVY [NSUOD aya :J9qQUIDAON
"Tes2e7D
10} 130ddns sty pur stesodosd siy
:O13ND SNIUOGIIIG “D jo aleUNqIaL

“BINT JO}

Jaypurdg snjniuey] snyaui0z -g
sydunisy

*resae7y snipnf jo

uorssasiodns ay) jo uonsanb 243
— a8eajsiysey, ayi jo Suruurdag

sniuoluy "Ww
saSIOPY JO J9ISePy
II 2¥S9"> sni[Ny “>
2(1¥9k & 105 {19qOI9O) 3018I91G]
SNIIINES] SNI[IAIIG “dG
JI 2¥S9"- sni[n] “>
:s[nsuo7)

6$ soo ‘I¥sa¥D sniqny “>
(skep 11) 0IwsIq

SNID SN[NIUIy] snpaUs0D “]

snqpaozeyy (ues WD) SMIPNETD “D
:s[nsuoz

gS ‘so

‘snuluosae7 osig snruindyey “Y

$$ ‘soo ‘s2y2[Ng suipnely ‘dy
:6b-0$ siosuaD

snppaosew ("UW }"D) sMIpNeTD *D

snqjneg snpidayq snyiway “7
:sjnsuoz

snyacsepy stipneyy ‘yw
snyny snisiding ‘rag
:s[Nsuo7

LSVa AHL

LSaM AHL

AITVLIGNV AWOU

SUYOSNHD
ANV SINSNOO ‘ILLS V4

797

"eA JO UOISEAUI UEIYWEg

"UOIIESIED jo yisig
“vous oy jo sodevuleyd Joao
Baz 3e A1OIDIA :snjUOg O1 JESIe_D

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoATUE) OSpquiey G UIUC sovoIsTp] osprquie;

‘uredg Joy snipag ‘OD

‘uredg 10} snuixeyy sniqe.y ‘O

‘uredg 30) sesae7) snyjny “>
ssydwinia
“epunyy 103 o17091/ddns Kep-of
‘uredg woody suinial Jesae7)

*(yaseyAy) epunyy jo ane

‘uredg 10} suedap ivsae>
“wini[Ny wns0,j ay) JO UONEIIpaq

‘idag ‘eajy pur sniuog

adh3q ‘[nevx 103 1es9e> snin] “D>
rydwinisy

‘suonepuno}

[euojo> ‘sauepedsurz 7

ay) 103 diysuazii ‘usw 9243

aq 0] S21¥3S2 UO INOgz] jo psryI

8 {aIBUIS JO JUDWIIZIEfUD fo00'o $1

03 W109 dI]GNd jo squardizaz

Jo vonanpas {spssatpu pur sia

LOY o1j7ipsazus ‘v1dej02 YO VOTUTOGe

‘saginba yey pue ssOreuas j[eYy 03

pauzniaa sarin{ Swojar Jepusje>
:bb—gb sainseaw [edisuid stp
‘QWOY 01 sUINIAD Jesae7 :Ajn(

*(-q2,4) snsdeyy jo apeg
“BOY
JO} INO Silas JEsIe :Jaqui9d9q $7
‘uredg
Jay 303 snpiday snrpwoy “Ww
syduniypé
‘siqap uo wnOIwWO;
“Ayeay 02 suINIaI JesaE"_ :saquisidasg

gb ‘soo ‘snpidaq snipway "Ww
:2SIO}] JO Jaasepy

AJ 3¥saeZD sniny “>
(Udy wo4j) 1018731

(snunxey sniqe.j 10} 199yNs

“Jaq 1£) snjiqoy snsuruey “5

sniuoqalL “>

(29q

1€ parp) snurxey sniqe.j “O
:sinayns

(29q0199

[18 ‘sayos) A] JesaeD snyny “>
:s]nsuo

‘soo ‘snpiday snipmay “Wh
19SIOH{ JO 123s ey
IT] 28598 snifny “D
:(szead o1 303 “{iudy) 3J0I¥I31q
snpiday snipway “WwW
TT] 2es9eD snyny “>
is[nsuoz
(UYVIA AYVIVOUALNI, JHL)

sniune, ‘dg

snuajeD snyn “O
:(aaquiaidag ws03}) sjnsuoD

798

“eIZAG Sazias snisse7

‘BIUOpasePy Sazias snanig

‘vISYy UI
Bfaqejog Aq painsexe sntuoqez L

8007 ‘ssorg ANsIoOATUE) OSprquiey G oUTTUGC sovoIsTp] osprquiey

*[nexy ourdyesuesy
ur snpida‘] surol Auouy
*UOTIDE UT S[NSUOD dy2 JO YWIQ]
‘eUnNy, pue WNJo]Es
uinso,j 3@ Auoluy jo 1v3jaq

“wun
ur sninig ‘q seBaisaq Auoluy

‘sniadwog snixag jo 90uad32WY

*0399ID JO Japsinus ay) ‘99qq L

ssuondrsasoig

‘3ny 61 ‘[nsuos spew jfasuay
$123 pur swoy Uo says ew
(,UBIAEIDO,) JESaRD sNI[NY “D

‘ureds 30) snprdaq snipweay “Ww

‘[NeSD Jo} snourg snneuny; “7
isydwnny

‘[Nexy 02 s1iedap Auoquy
‘QOULITIDYUT $.JESIeD
jo aouvidasor [euss0} sayeus
OY ‘snIAeIIO “> JO [eAIaIy
seq
dy JOY aAvI] SNIsseD puL sninig
-Auoquy Aq vonrsi3aq

‘1eSa¥v JO UONLUISSEsSsY “YDIEPy $1

“WaPEIP dy JO [esnjay ‘qaz $1

"S09 ‘(,UBIAEIDO,) JeSIeD SINT “>

bP ‘soo ‘sniuoluy ‘Ww

gt ‘soo ‘snpiday snipway “Ww
:(JaquIaAON Wo3j)
aupuaniissuos avrqnd tas tstaudntsy,

sisseg snipRnus, “qd

SeUursse) “D>

JaqUI2AON

02 (,UBIABIIO,) Jes2eD SNIIN] “D
asayng

(uonse ur patp 410q)

sonaip “V

SNUYIUOIIIE "SUE SNIQIA ‘D
:s[nsuoZ

snpiday snywey “Wy
:9SJOH JO Jaisep

(sanjadsad pur) A JesaeD sniyny ‘>
13018191Q,

FLPQEIOG snyeuszoy “dq
ayns

sniuowy "W

(yosep $1 03) A JesaeD sni[ny “5D
‘synsuo7

Lsvda AHL

LSaM AHL

ATVLIONV AWOU

SYOSNAD
ONV STINSNOD ‘ILSV4

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbreviations

AeA Antike und Abendland

AAntHung Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae

AAPal Atti dell accademia di scienze, lettere e arti di Palermo

AAWM Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Mainz, geistes- und
soxialwissenschaftliche Klasse

ABAW Abhandlungen der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philos.-
hist. Klasse

ABSA Annual of the British School at Athens

AC L’antiquité classique

ACD Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debrecensis

AClass Acta Classica. Proceedings of the Classical Association of South Africa

AD "Apxatodoyixov AeAriov

AE L’année épigraphique

AEA Archivo espanol de arqueologia

AFLC Annali della facolta di lettere e filosofia della Universita di Cagliari

AG Archivio giuridico

AHB The Ancient History Bulletin

AHR American Historical Review

AIIN Annali dell istituto italiano di numismatica

AIRF Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae

AJA American Journal of Archaeology

AJAH American Journal of Ancient History

AJPh American Journal of Philology

AMA Antitnyj Mir i Arkheologija

AMSI Atti e memorie della societa istriana di archeologia e storia patria

AncSoc Ancient Society

Annales (ESC)
Annales (Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations )

ANRW Alufstieg und Niedergang der rémischen Welt, ed. H. Temporini and
W. Haase. Berlin and New York, 1972-

ANSMusN — The American Numismatic Society Museum Notes

APhD Archives de philosophie du droit

ArchOrient — Archiv Orientalni

ARID Analecta Romana Instituti Danici

ArchClass Archeologia Classica

799

800

AS
AS AW
ASNP
AS Pap
BAR
BASO
BCAR
BCH
BEFAR
BGU

BIAO
BICS
BIDR

Les Bourgeoisies

BRL
Bruns

Bull. ép.
CAH

Du Chatiment

ABBREVIATIONS

Anatolian Studies

Abhandlungen der sachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig
Annali della scuola normale superiore di Pisa, Classe di lettere e filosofia
American Studies in Papyrology

British Archaeological Reports

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research

Bullettino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma

Bulletin de correspondance hellénique

Bibliothéque des écoles frangaises d’ Athénes et de Rome

Aegyptische Urkunden aus den Museen xu Berlin. Griechische
Urkunden. Berlin, 1895—

Bulletin de [institut francais d archéologie orientale

Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London
Bullettino dell istituto di diritto romano

Les ‘Bourgeoisies’ municipales italiennes aux Ile et Ter siécles avant J.-C.
(Colloque internat. CNRS 609, Naples 7-10 déc. 1981). Paris,
1983

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester

C. G. Bruns, ed., Fontes Iuris Romani Antiqui, edn 7 by O.
Gradenwitz, Tubingen, 1909

J. and L. Robert, Bulletin épigraphique (in REG)

The Cambridge Ancient History

Chronique d’ Egypte

Du chatiment dans la cité. Supplices corporels et peine de mort dans le
monde antique (Table ronde, Rome 9-11 nov. 1982) (Coll. éc. fr. de
Rome 79). Rome, 1984

CHCL The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: 1: Greek Literature,
ed. P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox. Cambridge, 1985. m1:
Latin Literature, ed. E. J. Kenney and W. V. Clausen.
Cambridge, 1982

CI] Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum

CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum

CoM Classica et Mediaevalia

COrdP tol Corpus des ordonnances des Ptolémées, ed. M. Th. Lenger. Brussels,
1964; 2nd corr. edn 1980

CPA Classical Philology

ca Classical Quarterly

CR Classical Review

CRAI Comptes rendus de lacadémie des inscriptions et belles-lettres

CronErc Cronache ercolanesi

cs Critica storica

CSCA California Studies in Classical Antiquity

DArch Dialoghi di archeologia

Le délit religieux

Le délit religieux dans la cité antique (Table ronde, Rome 6-7 avril
1978) (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 48). Rome, 1981

Delo e I’ Italia

ABBREVIATIONS 801

Delo e Italia, edd. F. Coarelli, D. Musti and H. Solin (Opusc.
Inst. Rom. Finlandiae 11). Rome, 1982

Les dévaluations

DHA
EEThess

EMC

Les dévaluations a Rome, 1 (Colloquio, Roma 1975) Rome, 1978; 11
(Colloquio, Gdansk 1978) Rome, 1980

Dialogues a’ histoire ancienne

’Emotynpovixn ’Emernpis tis diAocogixys Zyodjs Tob
Tlavertatnpiou Ocaoadovixns

Echos du monde classique

Entretiens Hardt

ESAR

FGrH

FIRA

FPL

GIF
Girard-Senn

Entretiens sur Pantiquité classique. Fondation Hardt. Vandoeuvres-
Geneva, 195 2-

An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, ed. Tenney Frank. 6 vols.
Baltimore, 1933-40

F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin and
Leiden, 1923—

S. Riccobono ef a/., Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani. 3 vols.
Florence, 1940-3

W. Morel and C. Buechner, Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum.
Leipzig, 1982

Giornale italiano di filologia

P.F. Girard and H. Senn, Les lois des Romains (Textes de droit
romain 1, 7th edn revised by various persons). Paris and Naples,

1977

GLM Geographi Latini Minores, ed. A. Riese. Heilbron, 1878

GerR Greece C” Rome

GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies

Greenidge—Clay
A. H. J. Greenidge and A. M. Clay, Sources for Roman History
133-70 B.c. 2nd edn revised by E. W. Gray. Oxford, 1960.
Further corrected and augmented 1986

GRF Grammaticae Romanae Fragmenta, ed. H. Funaioli (Vol. 1 only).
Leipzig, 1907

HebrUCA Hebrew Union College Annual

Hellenismus — Hellenismus in Mittelitalien, ed. P. Zanker (Kollog. Gottingen 5-7
juni 1974) (Abh. Gottingen 97). Gottingen, 1976

HRR H. W. G,. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae. 2 vols.
Leipzig, 1906-14

HSPb Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

HTbR Harvard Theological Review

IA Tranica Antiqua

IDélos F. Durrbach and others, Inscriptions de Délos. Paris, 1926-50

IE] Israel Exploration Journal

[Fay E. Bernard, Recueil des inscriptions grecques du Fayoum. 3 vols.
Leiden, 1975-81

IG Inscriptiones Graecae

802

IGBulg
IGRR

ILLRP

ILS
I Magnesia

ABBREVIATIONS

G. Mihailov, Inscriptiones Graecae in Bulgaria reper tae. Sofia, 195 8-
R. Cagnat and others, Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas
pertinentes 1, U1, Iv. Paris, 1906-27

A. Degrassi, Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae, 2 vols. 2nd
edn Florence, 1963-5

H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. 3 vols. Berlin, 1892-1916
O. Kern, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander. Berlin, 1900

L’impero romano

Inscr. Ital.
IOlympia
IOSPE

IPriene
JBM
JDAI
JEA
JFA
JHS
Ist
JMS
JNG
JRH
JRS
JS
JVEG

LCM
LEC
LSJ
Lugli

MAAR

L’impero romano e le strutture economiche e socialt delle provincie (Bibl.
di Athenaeum 4), ed. M. H. Crawford, Como, 1986
Inscriptiones Italiae xu, Fasti et Elogia, ed. A. Degrassi. 3 vols.
Rome, 1937-63

W. Dittenberger and K. Purgold, Die Inschriften von Olympia.
Berlin, 1896

B. Latyschev, Inscriptiones Antiquae Orae Septentrionalis Ponti
Euxini Graecae et Latinae. 2nd edn St Petersburg, 1916

F, Hiller v. Gaertringen, Die Inschriften von Priene. Berlin, 1906
Jahrbuch des bernischen historischen Museums

Jahrbuch des deutschen archaologischen Instituts

Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

Journal of Field Archaeology

Journal of Hellenic Studies

Journal of Jewish Studies

Journal of Mithraic Studies

Jabrbuch fiir Numismatik und Geldgeschichte

Journal of Religious History

Journal of Roman Studies

Journal des Savants

Jaarbericht van het Voor- Aziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap ex Oriente
Lux

Liverpool Classical Monthly

Les études classiques

H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th edn
revised by H. S. Jones. Oxford, 1940

G. Lugli, Fontes ad Topographiam veteris Urbis Romae pertinentes.
Rome, 1952

Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome

MDAI (A) (D) (1) (M) (R)

MEFRA
Mel. Heurgon

Mitteilungen des deutschen archaologischen Instituts (Athens,
Damascus, Istanbul, Madrid, Rome)

Meélanges d’archéologie et d'histoire de l’école francaise de Rome

L' Italie préromaine et la Rome républicaine. Mélanges offerts a Jacques
Heurgon. 2 vols. Rome, 1976

Museum Helveticum

Misurare la terra

Misurare la Terra: Centuriazioni e coloni nel mondo romano. 5 vols.
Modena, 1983-8

ABBREVIATIONS 803
MRR T. R. S. Broughton and M. L. Patterson, The Magistrates of the
Roman Republic, 3 vols. 1, 11 New York, 1951; 111 Atlanta, 1986
MianchBeitrPapyr
Miinchener Beitrage zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte
NAWG Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Philol.-
Hist. Klasse
NC Numismatic Chronicle
NE Numismatika i Epigraphica
NIJNW Neue Jahrbiicher fir Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung

Non-slave Labour

Des Ordres
ORF

ORom
Pagan Priests

PalEQ
Palingenesia

PapBrux
PapColon
PapLugdBat

PAPAS
P Berl dem

PBSR
PCPbS

Non-slave Labour in the Greco-Roman World, ed. P. Garnsey
(Camb. Phil. Soc. Suppl. 6). Cambridge, 1980

Nuova Rivista Storica

Notizie degli Scavi di antichita

Numismatische Zeitschrift

W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graecae Inscriptiones Selectae. 2 vols.
Leipzig, 1903-5

Des ordres a Rome, sous la direction de C. Nicolet (Publ. de la
Sorbonne. Sér. hist. ancienne et mediévale 13), Paris, 1984

H. Malcovati, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta. 2 vols. 4th edn
Turin, 1976-9

Opuscula Romana (Acta Inst. Rom. Regni Suediae)

Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World, ed. M. Beard
and J. A. North. London, 1989

Palestine Exploration Quarterly

O. Lenel, Palingenesia luris Civilis. Leipzig, 1889; repr. with
supplement, Graz, 1960

Papyrologica Bruxellensia, Brussels, 1962—

Papyrologica Coloniensia, Cologne and Opladen, 1964—
Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava, Publications of the Institute of
Papyrology of Leiden

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society

Demotische Papyrus aus den Kgl. Museen zu Berlin, ed. W.
Spiegelberg. Leipzig and Berlin, 1902

Papers of the British School at Rome

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society

Philosophia Togata

Phoenix

PLeid

PLond

Points de vue

Philosophia Togata: Essays in Philosophy and Roman Society, ed. M.
Griffin and J. Barnes. Oxford, 1989

The Phoenix

Papyri gratci Musei antiquarii publici Lugduni-Batavi, ed. C.
Leemans. 2 vols. 1843, 1885 (=P. Lugd. Bat.)

Greek Papyri in the British Museum, ed. F. G. Kenyon. 5 vols.

1893~1917

Points de vue sur la fiscalité antique, ed. H. van Effenterre. Paris,
1979

804

PP
PerP
PRyldem
PTebt
PSI

PYale

Quaderno 221

RA
RAL

RAN
RBA
RBi

RDGE

RIA
RIDA
RIL

ABBREVIATIONS

La parola del passato

Past and Present

Catalogue of the Demotic Papyri in the John Rylands Library,
Manchester, ed. F.LI. Griffith. 1909

The Tebtunis Papyri, ed. B. P. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt and E. J.
Goodspeed. Parts 1-3 London, 1902-38

Pubblicazioni della societa italiana per la ricerca dei papyri greci e latini
in Egitto. Florence, 1912—-

Yale Papyri in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, ed. J.
F. Oates and others. 2 vols. New Haven and Toronto, 1967 and
1981

Problemi attuali di scienza e di cultura (Colloquio italo-francese: La
filosofia greca e il diritto romano, Roma 14-17 apr. 1973)
(Quaderno Lincei 221). 2 vols. Rome, 1976-7

Revue archéologique

Rendiconti della classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche dell’
Accademia dei Lincei

Revue archéologique de Narbonne

Revue Belge d’archéologie et d'histoire de l'art

Revue biblique

Revue historique de droit francais et étranger

R. K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East, Baltimore,
1969

A. Pauly, G. Wissowa and W. Kroll, Real-Encyclopadie der
classischen Altertumswissenschaft

Revue des études anciennes

Revue des études grecques

Revue d’égyptologie

Revue des études juives

Revue des études latines

Rivista di filologia e di istruzione classica

Revue d'histoire du droit (= Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis)
Rheinisches Museum

Revue de l'histoire des religions

Rivista dell istituto nazionale di archeologia e storia dell arte

Revue internationale des droits de P antiquité

Rendiconti dell’istituto Lombardo, Classe di lettere, scienze morali e
Storiche

La Rivoluzione Romana

RN
Roma el’ Italia

Rotondi

La rivolugione romana: Inchiesta tra gli antichisti (Biblioteca di
Labeo vi). Naples, 1982
Revue numismatique

Incontro di studiosi ‘Roma et’ Italia fra i Gracchi e Silla’ (Pontignano
18-21 sett. 1969) (DArch 4/5 1970-1, 163-562)
G. Rotondi, Leges publicae populi Romani (Estratto dalla

RPAA
RPh
RPhilos
RSA

RSC

RSI

RSO

Sam melbuch

SAWW
SBAW
SCO

SDHI
SE

ABBREVIATIONS 805

Enciclopedia Giuridica Italiana). Milan, 1912; repr. Hildesheim,
1962

Rendiconti della pontificia accademia di archeologia

Revue de philologie

Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger

Rivista storica dell antichita

Rivista di studi classici

Rivista storica italiana

Rivista deght studi orientali

Sovietskaja Archeolgija

F. Preisigke and F. Bilabel, Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus
Agypten. I915—

Sitgungsberichte der dsterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaft in
Wien

Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philos.-
hist. Klasse

Studi classici e orientali

Studia et Documenta Historiae et Turis

Studi etruschi

Seaborne Commerce

Seager, Crisis

SEG
SGE
SIFC
SIG

SMSR
SO

The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient Rome: Studies in Archaeology and
History, ed. J. H. D’Arms and E. C. Kopff (MAAR 36). Rome,
1980

The Crisis of the Roman Republic: Studies in Political and Social
History, selected and introduced by R. Seager. Cambridge, 1969
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum

Soobstenija Gosudarstvennogo Ermitag¥a

Studi italiani di filologia classica

W. Dittenberger, Sy/loge Inscriptionum Graecarum. 4 vols. 3rd edn
Leipzig, 1915-24

Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni

Symbolae Osloenses

Societa Romana

TAPhA
Tecnologia

Trade

Tskhaltubo 1

Societa romana e produzione schiavistica, edd. A. Giardina and A.
Schiavone (Acta of the Colloquium, Pisa 1979), 3 vols. Bari,
1981

Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
Tecnologia, economia e socteta nel mondo romano (Atti del convegno,
Como 27-9 sett. 1979). Como, 1980

Trade in the Ancient Economy, edd. P. Garnsey, K. Hopkins and
C. R. Whittaker. London, 1983

Problemy Grecheskoi Kolonizatsii Severnogo i Vostochnogo
Prichernomorya (Materialy 1 Vsyesoyuznogo Symposiuma po
Drevnyei Istorii Prichernomorya, Tskhaltubo 1977). Tbilisi,

1979

806
Tskhaltubo 1

Tskhaltubo 111

UPZ

VDI
WChrest

WIA
WS
ZPE
ZSS

ABBREVIATIONS

Demographicheskaya Situatsia v Prichernomorya v period Velikoi
Grecheskoi Kolonizatsii (Materialy 1 Vsyesoyuznogo
Symposiuma po Drevnyei Istorii Prichernomorya, Tskhaltubo
1979). Tbilisi, 1981

Prichernomorye v Epokhu Ellinizma (Materialy 11 Vsyesoyuznogo
Symposiuma po Drevnyei Istorii Prichernomorya, Tskhaltubo
1982). Tbilisi, 1985

U. Wilcken, Urkunden der Ptolemderzeit, Parts 1 and 2, Berlin and
Leipzig, 1922-35

Vestnik Drevnei Istorii

L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken, Grandziige und Chrestomathie der
Papyruskunde 1. Part 2 (Chrestomathie)

Warzburger Jabrbiicher fir die Altertumswissenschaft

Wiener Studien

Zeitschrift fiir Papyrologie und Epigraphik

Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fiir Rechtsgeschichte (romanistische
Abteilung)

Tea Pee

\o 0

16.

17.
18.

20.
21.

22.
23.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. GENERAL STUDIES

Badian, E. Foreign Clientelae (264-70 B.c.). Oxford, 1958

Badian, E. Studies in Greek and Roman History. Oxford, 1964

Badian, E. Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic. Oxford, 1968
Badian, E. Publicans and Sinners. Ithaca, 1972

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. Romans and Aliens. London, 1979

Beard, M. and Crawford, M. H. Rome in the Late Republic. London, 1985
Beloch, K. ]. Der italische Bund unter Roms Hegemonie. Staatsrechtliche und
statistische Forschungen. Leipzig, 1880

Beloch, K. ]. Die Bevé/kerung der griechisch-romischen Welt. Leipzig, 1886
Beloch, K. J. Rémische Geschichte bis zum Beginn der punischen Kriege. Berlin
and Leipzig, 1926

Bernhardt, R. Polis und rémische Herrschaft in der spaten Republik. Berlin,
1985

Bickerman, E. ]. Chronology of the Ancient World. London, 1968, revd
1980

Bloch, G. and Carcopino, J. Histoire romaine 11, La république romaine de 133
avant J.-C. ala mort de César, rre Partie, Des Gracques a Sulla. Paris, 1930
Braund, D. C. ‘Royal wills and Rome’, PBSR 51 (1983) 16-57

Braund, D. C. Rome and the Friendly King. The Character of Client Kingship.
London and New York, 1984

Brisson, J.-P. (ed.) Problémes de la guerre a Rome. Paris and The Hague,
196

Bane P. A. Italian Manpower 22) B.C.—A.D.14. Oxford, 1971

Brunt, P. A. Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic. London, 1971

Brunt, P. A. ‘Laus imperit’, Imperialism in the Ancient World, ed. P. D. A.
Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, Cambridge, 1978, 159-91 (= Azo 288—
323)

Brunt, P. A. The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays. Oxford,
1988

Brunt, P. A. Roman Imperial Themes. Oxford, 1990

Cary, M. The Geographical Background of Greek and Roman History. Oxford,
1949

Ciaceri, E. Processi politici e relazioni internazionali. Rome, 1918

Ciaceri, E. Cicerone e i suot tempi. 2 vols. Milan, 1939-41

807

808
24.
25.
26,
27.
28.
29.

30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35-

36.
37:
38.
39.

40.

42.
43.

44.
45.

46.
47.

48.
49-
50.
51.

52.

53.
54.

A. GENERAL STUDIES

Cimma, M. R. Reges socti et amici populi romani. Milan, 1976

Crawford, M. H. The Roman Republic. London, 1978

Degrassi, A. Scritti vari di antichita. 4 vols. Venice and Trieste, 1967
Dilke, O. A. W. Greek and Roman Maps. London, 1985

Earl, D. C. The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome. London, 1967
Ferrary, J.-L. “Le idee politiche a Roma nell’epoca repubblicana’, Storia
delle idee politiche, economiche e sociali 1, ed. L. Firpo, Turin 1982, 723-804
Ferrary, J.-L. Phithellénisme et impérialisme. Rome, 1988

Finley, M. I. The Ancient Economy. London, 1973, znd edn 1984
Finley, M. I. Politics in the Ancient World. Cambridge, 1983

Fraccaro, P. Opuscula. 4 vols. Pavia, 1956~-7

Frank, T. An Economic History of Rome to the End of the Republic.
Baltimore, 1920

Frederiksen, M. Campania, ed. with additions by N. Purcell. London
(British School at Rome), 1984

von Fritz, K. The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity. New York,
1954

Fuchs, H. Der geistige Widerstand gegen Rom in der antiken Welt. Berlin, 1938
Galsterer, H. Herrschaft und Verwaltung im republikanischen Italien. Die
Begiehungen Roms zu den italischen Gemeinden vom Latinerfrieden 338 v. Chr.
bis zum Bundesgenossenkrieg 91 v. Chr. (Minchener Beitr. 68). Munich, 1976
Garlan, Y. War in the Ancient World: A Social History, transl. by J. Lloyd.
London, 1975

Gelzer, M. Die Nobilitat der rémischen Republik. Berlin, 1912, transl. by R.
Seager as The Roman Nobility. Oxford, 1975

Gelzer, M. Kieine Schriften, ed. H. Strasburger and Ch. Meier. 3 vols.
Wiesbaden, 1962-4

Griffin, M. T. Seneca. A Philosopher in Politics. Oxford, 1976

Gruen, E. S. The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. 2 vols. Berkeley,
198

Hahn, L. Rom und der Romanismus im griechisch-rémischen Osten. Leipzig,
1906

Harinand, J. L’armeée et le soldat a Rome de 107 a 50 avant notre ére. Paris,
1967

Harris, W. V. Rome in Etruria and Umbria. Oxford, 1971

Harris, W. V. War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327-70 B.c. Oxford,
1979

Heichelheim, F. M. Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Altertums. Leiden, 1938.
Italian edn with introd. by M. Mazza, Bari, 1972

Hellegouarc’h, J. Le vocabulaire des relations et des partis politiques sous la
République. Paris, 1963. 2nd edn 1972

Hellenismus in Mittelitalien. See Abbreviations under Hellenismus

Hill, H. The Roman Middle Class in the Republican Period. Oxford, 1952
Hinard, F. Les proscriptions de la Rome républicaine (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome
93). Rome, 1985

Hopkins, K. Conquerors and Slaves. Cambridge, 1978

Hopkins, K. and Burton, G. Death and Renewal. Cambridge, 1983

70.
71.
72.
73:
75:

76.

77:
78.
79:
80.

81.

GENERAL STUDIES 809

Jones, A. H. M. The Greek City. Oxford, 1940

Keppie, L. Colonisation and Veteran Settlement in Italy 47-14 B.c. London,
1983

Keppie, L. The Making of the Roman Army. From Republic to Empire.
London, 1984

Kromayer, J. Antike Schlachtfelder in Griechenland 11. Berlin, 1907
Kromayer, J. and Veith, G. Heerwesen und Kriegfibrung der Griechen und
Rémer (Handb. d. Altertumsw. tv 3.2). Munich, 1928

Latte, K. Rémische Religionsgeschichte (Handb. d. Altertumsw. v 4).
Munich, 1960.

Levick, B. M. ‘Morals, politics, and the fall of the Roman Republic’,
Ge@>R 29 (1982) 53-62

Lintott, A. W. Violence in Republican Rome. Oxford, 1968

Lintott, A. W. ‘Imperial expansion and moral decline in the Roman
Republic’, Historia 21 (1972) 626-38

Lintott, A. W. “What was the imperium Romanum?’, G&rR 28 (1981)
53-67

Lintott, A. W. ‘Democracy in the middle Republic’, ZSS 104 (1987)
34-§2

Lintott, A. W. ‘Electoral bribery in the Roman Republic’, JRS 80 (1990)
Magie, D. Roman Rule in Asia Minor. 2 vols. Princeton, 1950

Manni, E. Fasti ellenistici e romani, 323-31 a.C. (Kokalos Suppl.1). Palermo,
1961

Marquardt, J. and Wissowa, G. Rémische Staatsverwaltung (Handb. d.
rom. Alterthtimer 4-6). 2nd edn, 3 vols. Leipzig, 1881-5

Marsden, E. W. Greek and Roman Artillery. Historical Development.
Oxford, 1969; Technical Treatises, Oxford, 1971

de Martino, F. Storia della costituzione romana. 2nd edn, 5 vols. Naples,
1972-5

Meier, Ch. Res Publica Amissa. Eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der
Spaten rémischen Republik. Wiesbaden, 1966

Mélanges Heurgon. See Abbreviations under Mé/. Heurgon.

Michels, A. K. The Calendar of the Roman Republic. Princeton, 1967
Millar, F. G. B. ‘The political character of the classical Roman Republic,
200-151 B.C.’, JRS 74 (1984) 1-19

Mommsen, Th. Rémische Geschichte. 1854-6. 8th edn, 4 vols., Berlin
1888-94. Transl. by W. P. Dickson as The History of Rome, 5 vols.
London, 1894, and by C. A. Alexandre as Histoire Romaine, repr. with
introd. by C. Nicolet, 2 vols., Paris, 1985

Mommsen, Th. Rémisches Staatsrecht. Vols 1 and 11 3rd edn, Leipzig,
1887; Vol. 111 Leipzig, 1888

Gesammelte Schriften von Theodor Mommsen. 8 vols. Berlin, 1905-13
Miinzer, F. Romische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien. Stuttgart, 1920
Nicolet, C. L’ordre équestre a l’époque républicaine (313-43 av. J.-C.)
(BEF AR 207). 2 vols. Paris, 1966 and 1974

Nicolet, C. ‘Polybe et les institutions romaines’, Entretiens Hardt 20

(1974) 209-65

810

82.

83.

84.

85.
86.

87.

88.
89.

9°.
gl.
92.

93-

94A.

95.

97-
98.
99:
100.
102.
103.
104.
105.

106.
107.

A. GENERAL STUDIES

Nicolet, C. Le métier de citoyen dans la Rome républicaine. 2nd edn Paris,
1976. Translated by P. S. Falla as The World of the Citizen in Republican
Rome. London, 1980

Nicolet, C. Rome et la conquéte du monde méditerranéen 264-27 avant J.-C.
Les structures de [Italie romaine (Nouvelle Clio 8); 11 Genése d’un empire
(Nowelle Clio 8 bis). Paris, 1977 and 1978

Nicolet, C. ‘Centralisation d’état et problémes des archives dans le
monde gréco-romain’, Culture et idéologie dans la genése de l'état moderne,
Actes du collogue de Rome 13-17 oct. 1984 (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 82), Rome,
1985, 9-24

Nippel, W. Aafrubr und Polizei in der rémischen Republik. Stuttgart, 1988
North, J. A. ‘The development of Roman imperialism’, JRS 71 (1981)
1-9

North, J. A. ‘Democratic politics in Republican Rome’, P¢”P 126 (1990)
3-21

Ormerod, H. A. Piracy in the Ancient World. Liverpool, 1924

Parke, H. W. Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity, ed. B. C.
McGing. London and New York, 1988

Perelli, L. I/ movimento popolare nell’ultimo secolo della repubblica. Turin,
1982

Platner, S. B. and Ashby, T. A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome.
Oxford, 1929

von Péhlmann, R. Geschichte der sozialen Frage und des Sozialismus in der
antiken Welt. 2 vols. Munich, 1912

Préaux, C. Le monde hellénistique. 2 vols. Paris, 1978

Ramsay, W. M. The Historical Geography of Asia Minor. London, 1890
Rawson, E. D. Roman Culture and Society. Oxford, 1991

Rich, J. W. Declaring War in the Roman Republic in the Period of Transmarine
Expansion (Coll. Latomus 149). Brussels, 1976

La rivoluzione romana. See Abbreviations.

Rostovtzeff, M. The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire. 1926.
and edn, 2 vols. Oxford 1957

Rostovtzeff, M. The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 3
vols. Oxford, 1941

Rouland, N. Powvoir politique et dépendance personnelle dans l’antiquité
romaine, (Coll. Latomus 166). Brussels, 1979

de Ste Croix, G. E. M. The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World from
the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests. London, 1981

Salmon, E. T. Samnium and the Samnites. Cambridge, 1967

Salmon, E. T. The Making of Roman Italy. London, 1982

De Sanctis, G. Per la scienza dell’antichita. Turin, 1909

De Sanctis, G. Problemi di storia antica. Bati, 1932

Sands, P. C. The Client Princes of the Roman Empire under the Republic.
Cambridge, 1908

Schleussner, B. Die Legaten der réimischen Republik. Munich, 1978
Schneider, H. Die Entstebung der romischen Militardiktatur. Krise und
Niedergang einer antiken Republik. Cologne, 1971

108.

109.
110,
Tit.

112.

113,
114.
114A.
115.

116.
117.

118.
119.

120,
121.
122.

123.

124.
125.

126,
127.

128,

129.

130.

131.

132.
133.

LITERARY SOURCES 811

Scullard, H. H. From the Gracchi to Nero. 5th edn 1982, repr. London and
New York, 1988

Seager, R. ‘Factio: some observations’, [RS 62 (1972) 53-8

Seager, R. Crisis. See Abbreviations

Semple, E. C. The Geography of the Mediterranean Region in relation to
Ancient History. London, 1932

Shatzman, I. Senatorial Wealth and Roman Politics (Coll. Latomus 142).
Brussels, 1975

Sherwin-White, A. N. The Roman Citizenship. 2nd edn, Oxford, 1973
Smith, R. E. The Failure of the Roman Republic. Cambridge, 195 5

Smith, R. E. Service in the Post-Marian Roman Army. Manchester, 1958
Stranger, P. P. Untersuchungen zu den Namen der romischen Provinzen. Diss.
Tubingen, 1955

Strasburger, H. ‘Optimates’, RE 18.1 (1939) 773-98

Suolahti, J. The Junior Officers of the Roman Army in the Republican Period.
Helsinki, 1955

Syme, R. The Roman Revolution. 1939. 2nd edn Oxford, 1952

Syme, R. Roman Papers. Vols. 1-11 ed. E. Badian, vols. 1-v ed. A. R.
Birley. Oxford, 1979-88, vols. vi-vir ed. A. R. Birley, Oxford, 1991
Taylor, L. R. Party Politics in the Age of Caesar. Berkeley, 1949
Toynbee, A. J. Hannibal’s Legacy. 2 vols. OUP London, 1965
Vittinghoff, F. Rémische Kolonisation und Birgerrechtspolitik unter Caesar und
Augustus (A AWM 1951, 14). Wiesbaden, 1952

Vogt, J. Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man, transl. by T. E. V.
Wiedemann, Oxford, 1974

Walbank, F. W. Selected Papers. Cambridge, 1985

Weber, M. Storia economica e sociale dell antichita (pref. by A. Momigliano).
Rome, 1981

Wheeler, R. E. M. Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers. London, 1954
Will, E. Histoire politique du monde hellénistique (323-30 av. J.-C.) (Annales de
? Est 32). 2nd edn 2 vols. Nancy, 1979 and 1982

Wilson, A. J. N. Evsigration from Italy in the Republican Age of Rome.
Manchester, 1966

Wirszubski, C. Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic
and Early Principate. Cambridge, 1950

Wiseman, T. P. New Men in the Roman Senate. Oxford, 1971

Wiseman, T. P. “The definition of ““eques Romanus” in the late Republic
and early Empire’, Historia 19 (1970) 67-83

Wiseman, T. P., ed. Roman Political Life 90 B.c.—A.p. 69. Exeter, 1985
Wiseman, T. P. Roman Studies Literary and Historical, Liverpool, 1987

B. SOURCES
a. LITERARY SOURCES

Austin, R. G. M. Talli Ciceronis Pro M. Caelio Oratio. 3rd edn Oxford,
1960

812

16,
17.
18.

19.
20.

21.

22.
23,
24.
25.

26.
27.

28.

B. SOURCES

Badian, E. ‘Where was Sisenna?’, Athenaeum 42 (1964) 422-31

Badian, E. ‘An unrecognised date in Cicero’s text?’, Mnemai: Classical
Studies in Memory of Karl K. Hulley, ed. H. D. Evjan, Chico, CA, 1984,
97-101

Barnes, J. ‘Cicero’s De Fato and a Greek source’, Histoire et structure: a la
mémoire de Victor Goldschmidt, Paris, 1985, 229-39

Barwick, K. Caesars Bellum Civile. Tendenz, Abfassungszeit und Stil
(ASAW 99.1). Berlin, 1951

Bloch, H. ‘The structure of Sallust’s Historiae. The evidence of the Fleury
manuscript’, Studies in Honor of A. M. Albareda, ed. S. Prete, New York,
1961, 61-76

Buchheit, V. ‘Ciceros Kritik an Sulla in der Rede fir Roscius aus
Ameria’, Historia 24 (1975) 570-91

Buchheit, V. ‘Chrysogonus als Tyrann in Ciceros Rede fiir Roscius aus
Ameria’, Chiron 5 (1975) 193-211

Calboli, G. M. Porci Catonis Oratio pro Rhodiensibus. Bologna, 1978
Cardauns, B. Varros Logistoricus iber die Gotterverehrung (Diss. Koln).
Wirzburg, 1960

Cardauns, B. M. Terentius Varro, Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum. 2 vols.
Wiesbaden, 1976

Cardauns, B. ‘Varro und die Religion. Zur Theologie,
Wirkungsgeschichte und Leistung der “Antiquitates Rerum
Divinarum”’, ANRW 11.16.1 (1978) 80-103

Carter, J. M. Sallust: Fragments of the Histories (Lactor 6). London, 1970,
repr. 1978

Castagnoli, F. ‘L’insula nei cataloghi regionari di Roma’, RFIC 104
(1976) 45-52

Castiglioni, L. ‘Motivi antiromani nella tradizione storica antica’, RIL
61 (1928) 625-39

Cichorius, C. Untersuchungen zu Lucilius. Berlin, 1908, repr. 1964

Clark, A. C. Pro T. Annio Milone ad Iudices Oratio. Oxford, 1895
Collart, J. Varron grammairien latin. Paris, 1954

della Corte, F. Varrone: il terzo gran lume romano. 2nd edn Florence, 1970
Crook, J. A. ‘Lex “Rivalicia” (FIRA 1, no.5)’, Athenaeum 64 (1986)
45-53

Cuff, P. J. ‘Prolegomena to a critical edition of Appian B. C. 1’, Historia
16 (1967) 177-88

Dahlmann, H. ‘Terentius’ (84), RE Suppl. 6 (1935) 1172-277
Dahlmann, H. ‘Varroniana’, ANRW 1.3 (1973) 3-25

Dalzell, A. ‘Lucretius’, CHCL 11 (1982) 207-29

David, J. M. e¢ a/., ‘Le commentariolum petitionis de Q. Cicéron’,
ANRW 1.3 (1973) 239-77

Derow, P. S. ‘Polybius, Rome and the East’, JRS 69 (1979) 1~15
Dilke, O. A. W. The Roman Land Surveyors. An Introduction to the
Agrimensores. Newton Abbott, 1971. (Also ANRW 11.1 (1974) 564-92)
Dorrie, H. ‘Polybios uber “‘pietas”, ‘“‘religio”’ und ‘‘fides” (zu Buch 6,
Kap. 56)’, Mélanges de philosophie, de litt. et d’hist. ancienne offerts a Pierre

29.
31.
32.
33-

34.

35.

36.
37-

38.
39-

40.
41.

42.
43.

44.
45.

46.
47.

48.
49-

LITERARY SOURCES 813

Boyancé (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 22), Rome, 1974, 251-72

Douglas, A. E. M. Tulli Ciceronis Brutus. Oxford, 1966

Douglas, A. E. Cicero (Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics 2).
Oxford, 1968, repr. with addenda 1978

Earl, D. C. The Political Thought of Sallust. Cambridge, 1961

Edelstein, L. and Kidd, I. G. Posidonins. 1 Cambridge, 1972, 11 (2 vols.)
Cambridge 1988

Ensslin, W. ‘Appian und die Liviustradition zum ersten Birgerkrieg’,
Kio 20 (1926) 415-65

Fantham, E. ‘The synchronistic chapter of Gellius (N.A 17.21) and some
aspects of Roman chronology and cultural history between Go and 50
B.c.’, LCM 6 (1981) 7-17

Ferrary, J.-L. ‘L’archéologie du De Re Publica (2.2,4-37,63): Cicéron
entre Polybe et Platon’, JRS 74 (1984) 87-98

Forni, G. Valore storico e fonti di Pompeio Trogo 1. Urbino, 1958

Frier, B. W. Libri annales pontificorum maximorum. The Origins of the
Annalistic Tradition (Pap. and Monog. Amer. Ac. Rome 27). Rome, 1979
Gabba, E. Appiano e la storia delle guerre civili. Florence, 1956

Gabba, E. ‘Note sulla polemica anticiceroniana di Asinio Pollione’, RST
69 (1957) 317-39

Gabba, E. Appiani Bellorum Civilium Liber 1. 1958, znd edn Florence,
1967

Gabba, E. ‘Studi su Dionigi di Alicarnasso 111. La proposta di legge
agraria di Spurio Cassio’, Athenaeum 42 (1964) 29-41

Geiger, ]. Cornelius Nepos and Ancient Political Biography. Stuttgart, 1985
Gow, A. S. F.and Page, D. L. The Greek Anthology 1. The Garden of Philip.
2 vols. Cambridge, 1968

Henderson, M. I. ‘De commentariolo petitionis, JRS 40 (1950) 8-21
Homeyer, H. Die antiken Berichte iiber den Tod Ciceros und ihre Quellen.
Baden-Baden, 1964

How, W. W. Cicero, Select Letters 11, Commentary. Oxford, 1925

Janke, M. Historische Untersuchungen zu Memnon von Herakleia. Diss.
Wirzburg, 1963

Jocelyn, H. D. The Tragedies of Ennius. Cambridge, 1967

Jonkers, E. J. Social and Economic Commentary on Cicero’s De Inmperio Cn.
Pompei. Leiden, 1959

Jonkers, E. J. Social and Economic Commentary on Cicero’s De Lege Agraria
Orationes Tres. Leiden, 1963

Keaveney, A. ‘Four puzzling passages in Appian’, GIF 33 (1981) 247-50
Keaveney, A. and Strachan, J.C. G. ‘L. Catilina legatus: Sallust, Histories
1.46M’, CQ (1981) 363-6

Kenney, E. J. Lucretius (Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics
11). Oxford, 1977

Kinsey, T. E. ‘The dates of the pro Roscio Amerino and pro Quinctio’,
Mnemosyne 20 (1967) 61-7

Kinsey, T. E. M. Tullii Ciceronis pro Quinctio Oratio. Sydney, 1971
Kinsey, T. E. ‘Cicero’s case against Magnus, Capito and Chrysogonus in

814

71.

72.
73:
74:
75:

B. SOURCES

the Pro Sex. Roscio Amerino and its use for the historian’, AC 49 (1980)
17390

Kinsey, T. E. ‘The political insignificance of Cicero’s pro Roscio’, LCM 7
(1982) 39-40

Koestermann, E. C. Sallustius Crispus. Bellum Jugurthinum. Heidelberg,
1971

Kornemann, E. Zar Geschichte der Gracchenzeit. Quellenkritische und
chronologische Untersuchungen (Klio Beih. 1). Leipzig, 1903

Kumaniecki, K. ‘Les discours égarés de Cicéron “pro C. Cornelio”’,
Med. Kon. Vilaam. Acad. Belg. 32 (1970) 3-36

Laffranque, M. ‘Poseidonios historien. Un épisode significatif de la
premiére guerre de Mithridate’, Pallas 11 (1962) 103-9

Langenberg, G. M. Terenti Varronis Liber De Philosophia. Ausgabe und
Erklarung der Fragmente. Cologne, 1959

La Penna, A. Sallustio e la rivoluzione romana. Milan, 1969

Larsen, J. A. O. ‘Consilium in Livy xtv.118.6-7’, CPA 44 (1949) 73-90
Lenaghan, J. O. A Commentary on Cicero’s Oration De Haruspicum
Responso. The Hague, 1969

McGushin, P. C. Sallustius Crispus. Bellum Catilinae. A Commentary
(Mnemosyne Suppl. 45). Leiden, 1977

Magnino, D. Appiani Bellorum Civilium Liber Tertius. Florence, 1984
Malitz, J. Ambitio mala, Studien zur politischen Biographie des Sallust. Bonn,
1975

Malitz, J. Die Historien des Poseidonios (Zetemata 74). Munich, 1983
Manuwald, B. Cassius Dio und Augustus. Philologische Untersuchungen zu den
Biichern 45—y6 des dionischen Geschichtswerkes (Palingenesia 14). Wiesbaden,
1979

arses E. W. Greek and Roman Artillery. Technical Treatises. Oxford,
1971

Marshall, B. A. A Commentary on Asconius. Columbia, Missouri, 1985
Martin, R. Recherches sur les agronomes latins. Paris, 1971

Nagle, D. B. ‘An allied view of the Social War’, AJA 77 (1973) 367-78
Nardo, D. I/ Commentariolum Petitionis: la propaganda elettorale nella ars di
Quinto Cicerone. Padua, 1970

Nisbet, R. G. M. Tulli Ciceronis de Domo Sua ad Pontifices Oratio.
Oxford, 1939 :

Nisbet, R. G. M. M. Talli Ciceronis in L. Calpurnium Pisonem Oratio.
Oxford, 1961

Nisbet, R. G. M. ‘The Commentariolum Petitionis’, ]RS 51 (1961) 84-7
Ogilvie, R. M. A Commentary on Livy Books 1-5. Oxford, 1965

Ogilvie, R. M. ‘Caesar’, CHCL 11 (1982) 281-5

Ogilvie, R. M. and Pelling, C. B. R. ‘Titi Livi Lib. xcr’, PCPAS 30 (1984)
116-25

Paterson, J.‘ Transalpinae gentes: Cicero, De Re Publica 3.16’, CQ 28 (1978)
452-8

Paul, G. M. A Historical Commentary on Sallust’s Bellum Jugurthinum.
Liverpool, 1984

90.
91.

92.
93-

94:
95-
96.
97-
98.
99:

100.
101.

102.
103.
104.
105.

106.

107.
108.

109.
110,

IIt.

LITERARY SOURCES 815

Pelling, C. B. R. ‘Plutarch and Roman politics’, Past Perspectives, ed. I. S.
Moxon é¢ a/., Cambridge, 1986, 159-87

Philippson, R. ‘Tullius’ (29), ‘Die philosophischen Schriften’, RE 7A
(1939) 1104-92

Phillips, E. J. ‘Cicero, ad Atticum 1 2’, Philologus 114 (1970) 291-4
Pocock, L. G. A Commentary on Cicero in Vatinium. London, 1926
Powell, J. G. F. Cicero, Cato Maior de senectute. Cambridge, 1988
Preibisch, P. Two Studies on the Roman Pontifices. New York, 1975 (repr. of
Quaestiones de libris pontificiis, Bratislava, 1874 and Fragmenta librorum
pontificiorum, Tilsit, 1878)

Rambaud, M. Cicéron et histoire romaine. Paris, 1953

Rambaud, M. L’art de la déformation historique dans les Commentaires de
César. 2nd edn Paris, 1966

Ramsey, J. T. Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae. Chico, ca, 1984

Rawson, E. ‘The literary sources for the pre-Marian army’ PBSR 39
(1971) 13-31 (=A 94A, 34-57)

Rawson, E. ‘History, historiography, and Cicero’s expositio consiliorum
suorum, LCM 7 (1982) 121-4 (=A 94A, 408-15)

Regell, P. Roman Augury and Etruscan Divination. New York, 1975 (repr.
of De augurum publicorum libris, Bratislava, 1878 and Fragmenta auguralia,
Hirschberg, 1882)

Reid, J. S. M. Tulli Ciceronis Academica. London, 1885

Richard, J. C. ‘Pline et les myrtes du temple de Quirinus’, Latomus 45
(1986) 783-96

Richardson, J. S. ‘Polybius’ view of the Roman empire’, PBSR 47 (1979)
I-11

van Rinsveld, B. ‘Cicéron, de re publica 111, 9, 15-16’, Latomus qo (1981)
280-91

Rostovizeff, M. I. Strabon kak istochnik dlya istorii Bospora. Kharkov, 1914
Rubinsohn, Z. ‘A note on Plutarch, Crassus x.1’, Historia 19 (1970)
624-7

Schmidt, O. E. Der Briefwechsel des M. Tullius Cicero von seinem Prokonsulat
in Cilicien bis zu Caesars Ermordung. Leipzig, 1893

Seager, R. “Two urban praetors in Valerius Maximus’, CR 84 (1970) 11
Seager, R. ‘Valerius Maximus vii 7.7: addendum’, CR 86 (1972) 314
Seager, R. “Populares” in Livy and the Livian tradition’, CQ 71 (1977)
377-90

Seager, R. ‘The political significance of Cicero’s pro Roscio’, LCM 7
(1982) 10-12

Sedley, D. ‘Epicurus, On Nature Book xxvur’, CronErc 3 (1973) 5-83
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. Cicero’s Letters to Atticus. 7 vols. Cambridge,
1965-70

Shackleton Bailey, D. R. Two Studies in Roman Nomenclature. New York,
1976

Shackleton Bailey, D. R. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares. 2 vols.
Cambridge, 1977

Shackleton Bailey, D. R. Cicero, Ad Quintum Fratrem et M. Brutum.

816

112.
113,

114.
115.

116.
117.

118.

119.

120.

121.

123,
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.

130,

132.
133.
134.

135.

137.
138.

B. SOURCES

Cambridge, 1980

Sherwin-White, A. N. The Letters of Pliny. Oxford, 1966

Skydsgaard, J. E. Varro the Scholar: Studies in the first Book of Varro’s De
Re Rustica. Copenhagen, 1968

Strasburger, H. ‘Poseidonios on problems of the Roman empire’, JRS 55
(1965) 40-53

Sumner, G. V. The Orators in Cicero’s Brutus: Prosopography and Chronology.
Toronto, 1973

Syme, R. Sallust. Berkeley, 1964

Twyman, B. L. ‘The date of Sulla’s abdication and the chronology of the
first book of Appian’s Civil Wars’, Athenaeum 54 (1976) 271-95
Tyrrell, W. B.A Legal and Historical Commentary to Cicero's Pro C. Rabirio
Perduellionis Reo. Amsterdam, 1978

Valgiglio, E. Plutarco, Vita di Silla. 2nd edn Turin, 1960

Vretska, K. C. Sallustius Crispus de Catilinae Coniuratione. 2 vols.
Heidelberg, 1976 ,

Walbank, F. W. A Historical Commentary on Polybius. 3 vols. Oxford,
1957-69

Walbank, F. W. ‘The Scipionic legend’, PCPAS 13 (1967) 54-69
(= Selected Papers 120-37)

Walbank, F. W. Polybius. Berkeley, 1972

Walser, G. Der Briefwechsel des L. Munatius Plancus mit Cicero. Basle, 1957
Walton, F. R. ‘A neglected historical text’, Historia 14 (1965) 236-51
Wiseman, T. P. Clio’s Cosmetics. Leicester, 1979

Wiseman, T. P. Catullus and his World. Cambridge, 1985

Wiseman, T. P. ‘Who was Crassicius Pansa?’, TA PAA 115 (1985) 187-96
Woodman, A. J. Velleius Paterculus: the Caesarian and Augustan Narratives
(2.41-93). Cambridge, 1983

de Zulueta, F. The Institutes of Gaius. 2 vols. Oxford, 1946 and 1953

b. EPIGRAPHY AND NUMISMATICS

Anderson, J. G. C., Cumont, F. and Grégoire, H. Recueil des inscriptions
grecques et latines du Pont et de ? Arménie (Studia Pontica 111). Brussels, 1910
Bagnall, R. S. and Derow, P. Greek Historical Documents: The Hellenistic
Period. Chico, CA, 1981

Birks, P., Rodger, A. and Richardson, J. S. ‘Further aspects of the Tabula
Contrebiensis, JRS 74 (1984) 45—73

Boehringer, C. Zur Chronologie mittelhellenistischer Minzserien, 220-160 v.
Chr. Berlin, 1972

Bove, L. Documenti processuali dalle Tabulae Pompeianae di Murécine. Naples,
197

Bove, L. Documenti di operazioni finanziarie dall’archivio dei Sulpici. Naples,
1984

Boyce, G. K. Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeti (MAAR 14). Rome, 1937
Bruna, F. J. Lex Rubria: Caesars Regelung fiir die richterlichen Kompetenzen
der Munizipalmagistrate in Gallia Cisalpina. Text, Ubersetzung und

139.

140.
141.

142.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
149.
150.

151.
152.

153.
154.
155.
156,

157.
158.

EPIGRAPHY AND NUMISMATICS 817

Kommentar. Leiden, 1972

Cabanes, P. ‘Nouvelles inscriptions d’Albanie méridionale (Bouthrotos
et Apollonia)’, ZPE 63 (1986) 137-55

Calabi Limentani, I. Epigrafia latina. Venice and Milan, 1968
Camodeca, G. ‘Per una riedizione dell’archivio puteolano dei Sulpici’,
Puteoli 6 (1982) 3-53; 7-8 (1984) 3-25; 9-10 (1985-6) 3-40

Coarelli, F. ‘Su alcuni proconsoli di Asia tra la fine del IJ e gli inizi del I
secoloa.C. e sulla politica di Mario in oriente’, Tituli 4 (= Atti del colloguio
internazionale AIEGL su epigrafia e ordine senatorio1, Rome, 1982), 435-51
Cormack, J. M. R. ‘The gymnasiarchal law of Beroea’, Ancient Macedonia
u1 (Papers of the 2nd International Symposium, Thessalonike, 10-12 Aug. 1973),
Thessalonica, 1977, 139-49

Crawford, M. H. Roman Republican Coinage. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1974
Crawford, M. H. Coinage and Money under the Roman Republic. London,
1985

Crawford, M. H. and Wiseman, T. P. ‘The coinage of the age of Sulla’,
NC 4 (1964) 141-58

Dakaris, S. ‘I Romaiki politiki stin Ipeiro’, Nikopolis 1 (Proc. of the rst
Internat. Symposium on Nikopolis, 23-9 Sept. 1984), Preveza, 1987, 11-21
Derow, P. S. and Forrest, W. G. ‘An inscription from Chios’, ABSA 77
(1982) 79-92

Duchéne, H. ‘Sur la stéle d’ Aulus Caprilius Timotheos, ssmatemporos’,
BCH 110 (1980) 513-30

Engelmann, H. and Knibbe, D. ‘Das Zollgesetz der Provinz Asia, eine
neue Inschrift aus Ephesos’, EA 14 (1989) 1-206

Fentress, E. ‘Via Aurelia, Via Aemilia’, PBSR 52 (1984) 72-6
Frederiksen, M. ‘The Lex Rubria, reconsiderations’, JRS 54 (1964)
e297

Frederiksen, M. ‘The Republican municipal laws: errors and drafts’, JRS
55 (1965) 183-98

Galsterer, H. ‘Die lex Osca Tabulae Bantinae — eine Bestandaufnahme’,
Chiron 1 (1971) 191-214

Galsterer-Kroll, B. ‘Untersuchungen zu den Beinamen der Stadte des
Imperium Romanum’, Epigraphische Studien 9 (1972) 44-145

Garnsey, P., Gallant, T. and Rathbone, D. ‘Thessaly and the grain
supply of Rome during the second century B.c.’, [RS 74 (1984) 30-44
Gascou, J. ‘Inscriptions de Tébessa’, MEFRA 81 (1969) 537-99
Gasperini, L. ‘Su alcuni epigrafi di Taranto romano’, Mise. greca e romana
1, Rome, 1968, 379-97

Gasperini, L. ‘Ancora sul frammento cesariano di Taranto’, Epigraphica
33 (1971) 48-59

Gilyevich, A. M. ‘Chersonesus and the Pontic state of Mithridates VI
according to numismatic data’ (Russ.), Tskhaltubo ut, 608-17
Giovannini, A. Rome et /a circulation monétaire en Gréce au Ile siécle avant
J.-C. Basle, 1978

Golenko, K. V. ‘Bronze coins of the cities of Pontus and Paphlagonia in
the time of Mithridates VI from the finds on the Bosporus’ (Russ.), K/io

818

163.

164.
165.

166.

167.
168.
169.
170.

171.
172.

17}.
174.
175.
176.

177.
178.

182.
183.

184.
185.

186

B. SOURCES

46 (1965) 307-22

Golenko, K. V. ‘Anonymous Pontic copper’ (Russ.) VDI 1969.1 (107)
130-54

Golenko, K. V. ‘Pontus und Paphlagonien’, Chiron 3 (1973) 467-99
Golenko, K. V. and Karyszkovski, P. J. ‘The gold coinage of King
Pharnaces of the Bosporus’, NC 12 (1972) 25-38

Gordon, R. L. ‘The date and significance of CIMRM 593 (British
Museum, Townley Collection)’, JMS 2 (1977/8) 148-74

Grebenkin, V. N. and Zaginailo, A. G. ‘On the question of coin
circulation in the state of Pontus at the time of Mithridates Eupator
(Russ.), Tskhaltubo 111, 22-4

Hall, A. S. ‘New light on the capture of Isaura Vetus by P. Servilius
Vatia’, A&ten des VI internat. Kongresses fir gr. und lat. Epigraphik (Vestigia
17), Munich, 1972, 568-71

Hardy, E. G. Roman Laws and Charters. Oxford, 1912

Hassall, M., Crawford, M. H. and Reynolds, J. ‘Rome and the eastern
provinces at the end of the second century B.c.’, JRS 64 (1974) 195-220
Head, B. V. Historia Numorum. 2nd edn Oxford, 1911

Hinrichs, F. T. ‘Die lateinische Tafel von Bantia und die ‘‘Lex de
Piratis”’, Hermes 98 (1970) 473-502

Holleaux, M. ‘Décret de Chéronée relatif a la premiére guerre de
Mithradates’, Etudes d’épigraphie et d'histoire grecques 1, Paris, 1938, 143-59
Holleaux, M. “Le décret de Bargylia en l"honneur de Poseidonios’, Etudes
d' épigraphie et d’histoire grecques 11, Paris, 1938, 179-98

Imhoof-Blumer, F. ‘Die Kupferpragung des mithridatischen Reiches
und andere Miinzen des Pontus und Paphlagoniens, NZ 5 (1912) 169-84
Johannsen, K. Die lex agraria des Jahres 111 v, Chr. Diss. Munich, 1971
Jones, H. S. ‘A Roman law concerning piracy’, JRS 16 (1926) 155-73
Karyshkovsky, P. O. ‘Monetary circulation at Olbia at the end of the
second century and in the first half of the first century B.c.’ (Russ.) NE 5
(1965) 62-74

Knapp, R. C. ‘The date and purpose of the Iberian denarii’, NC (1977)
1-18

Koukouli-Chrysanthaki, Ch. ‘Politarchs in a new inscription from
Amphipolis’, Ancient Macedonian Studies in honor of Charles F. Edson (Inst.
for Balkan Studies 158), Thessalonica, 1981, 229-41

Kraay, C. M. ‘Caesar’s quattuorviri of 44 B.c. The arrangement of their
issues’, NC 14 (1954) 18-31

Kraay, C. M. and Hirmer, M. Greek Coins. London, 1966

Kleiner, F. S. ‘The 1926 Piraeus hoard and Athenian bronze coinage ¢.86
B.c.’, AD 28 (1973) 169-86

Kleiner, G. ‘Pontische Reichsmiinzen’, MDAI(I) 6 (1955) 1-21
Krahmer, G. ‘Eine Ehrung fiir Mithradates Eupator in Pergamon’,
JDAI qo (1925) 183

Laff, U. ‘La lex Aelia Furfensis’, La Cultura Italica (Atti del Convegno della
Societa Italiana di Glottologia, Pisa 19-20 dic. 1977), Pisa, 1978, 121-48

186a. Laff, U. ‘La Lex Rubria de Gallia Gisalpina’, Athenaeum 64 (1986) 5-44

187.
188.
189.

190.

192.
193.

194.

196.

197.
198.
199.
200.
201.
202.
203.
204.
205.
206,
207.

208.
209.

EPIGRAPHY AND NUMISMATICS 819

La Regina, A. ‘Le iscrizioni osche di Pietrabbondante e la questione di
Bovianum Vetus’, RAM 109 (1966) 280-6

Lewis, D. M. ‘The chronology of the Athenian new style coinage’, NC 2
(1962) 275

Lintott, A. W. ‘Notes on the Roman law inscribed at Delphi and Cnidos’,
ZPE 20 (1976) 65-82

Lintott, A. W. ‘The guaestiones de sicariis et veneficis and the Latin /ex
Bantina’, Hermes 106 (1978) 125-38

Lintott, A. W. ‘The Roman judiciary law from Tarentum’, ZPE 45
(1982) 127~38

Lintott, A. W. ‘The so-called Tabula Bembina and the Humanists’,
Athenaeum 61 (1983) 201-14

Lopez Melero, R., Sanchez Abal, J. L.and Garcia Jimenez, S. ‘El bronce
de Alcantara: una deditio del 104 a.C.’, Gerion 2 (1984) 265-323

Luce, T. J. ‘Political propaganda on Roman republican coins: circa 92-82
B.C.’, AJA 72 (1968) 25-39

Mackay, P. ‘Macedonian tetradrachms of 148-147 B.c.’, ANSMusN 14
(1968) 15-40

Mackay, P. “The coinage of the Macedonian republics 168-146 B.c.’,
Ancient Macedonia t (Papers of the 1st International Symposium, Thessalonike
1968), Thessalonica, 1970, 256-64

Manganaro, G. ‘Citta di Sicilia e santuarii panellenici nel III e IT secolo
a.C.’, Historia 13 (1964) 414-39

Mattingly, H. B. ‘The two Republican laws of the Tabula Bembina’, JRS
59 (1969) 129-43

Mattingly, H. B. ‘Some third magistrates in the Athenian new style
coinage’, JHS 91 (1971) 85-93

Mattingly, H. B. ‘The date of the “de agro Pergameno”’, AJP 93 (1972)
412-23

Mattingly, H. B. ‘L. Julius Caesar, governor of Macedonia’, Chiron 9
(1979) 147-67

Mellor, R. ‘The dedications on the Capitoline hill’, Casron 8 (1978) 319-
30

Merkholm, O. ‘Some Cappadocian problems’, NC 2 (1962) 407-11
Morkholm, O. ‘Some Cappadocian die-links’, NC 4 (1964) 21-5
Morkholm, O. ‘The coinage of Ariarathes VIII and IX of Cappadocia’,
Essays in Greek Coinage Presented to Stanley Robinson, ed. C. M. Kraay and
G. K. Jenkins, Oxford, 1968, 241-58

Merkholm, O. ‘The classification of Cappadocian coins’, NC 9 (1969)
21-31

Moarkholin: O. ‘Ptolemaic coins and chronology: the dated silver
coinage of Alexandria’, ANSMusN 20 (1975) 7-24

Morkholm, O. ‘The Cappadocians again’, NC 19 (1979) 242-6
Morkholm, O. ‘The Parthian coinage of Seleucia on Tigris ¢.go-5 5 B.C.’,
NC 20 (1980) 38-47

Nenci, G. ‘Considerazioni sui decreti di Entella’, ASNP 12 (1982)
1069-86

820

211.
212.

213.

214.
215.

216.
217.

218.

223.
224.
225.
226.

227.

228.
229.

230.
231.
232.

233.
234.

235.
236.

237.
238.
239.

B. SOURCES

Newell, E. T. Royal Greek Portrait Coins. New York, 1937

Nicolet, C. et a/. Insula Sacra. La lot Gabinia-Calpurnia de Délos (Coll. éc. fr.
Rome 45). Rome, 1980

Ostrow, S. ‘Augustales along the Bay of Naples’, Historia 34 (1985)
64-101

Panciera, S. “Tra topografia e epigrafia 11’, ArchClass 22 (1970) 138
Panciera, S. ‘Nuovi documenti epigrafici per la topografia di Roma
antica’, RPA A 43 (1970/1) 109-34

Pani, M. ‘Su un nuovo cippo graccano dauno’, RIL 111 (1977) 389-400
Pearse, J. L. D. ‘Three Alba of the Collegium Fabrorum Tignariorum of
Rome’, BCAR 85 (1980) 164-96

Pfeiler, H. ‘Die frihesten Portrats des Mithridates Eupator und die
Bronzepragung seiner Vorganger’, Schweizer Miinzblatter 18.7 (1968)
78-80

Plassart, A. ‘Décrets de Thespies’, Mé/anges d’arch. et d’hist. offerts a Ch.
Picard, RA 29-32 (1949) 825-32

Price, M. J. “The new-style coinage of Athens’, NC 4 (1964) 27-36
Price, M. J. ‘Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysos and the coinages of the
Black Sea’, NC 8 (1968) 1-12

Quoniam, P. ‘A propos d’une inscription de Thuburnica’, CR_AI (1950)
332-6

Raubitschek, A. E. ‘Epigraphical notes on Julius Caesar’, JRS 44 (1954)
65-75

Reinach, T. Namismatique ancienne: trois royaumes ad’ Asie Mineure. Paris,
1888

Reinach, T. ‘A stele from Abonouteichos’, NC 5 (1905) 113-19
Reynolds, J. Aphrodisias and Rome (JRS Monograph 1). London, 1982
Richardson, J. S. ‘The Tabula Contrebiensis: Roman law in Spain in the
early first century B.c.’, JRS 73 (1983) 33-41

Robert, J. and Robert, L. Claros 1. Décrets hellénistiques 1. Paris, 1989
Robert, L. Etudes anatoliennes. Recherches sur les inscriptions grecques del’ Asie
mineure. Patis, 1937

Robert, L. ‘Inscriptions de Phocée’, Hellenica 10, Paris, 1955, 257-61
Robert, L. ‘Recherches épigraphiques’, REA 62 (1960) 276-361
Robert, L. ‘Deux tétradrachmes de Mithridate V Evergéte, roi du Pont’,
JS July/Sept. 1978, 151-63

Robinson, D. M. ‘Greek and Latin inscriptions from Sinope and
environs’, AJA 9 (1905) 294-333

Robinson, E. S. G. ‘Cistophori in the name of king Eumenes’, NC 14
(1954) 1-8

Rolland, H. ‘Deux nouvelles inscriptions celtiques’, CR_AI (1955) 91-9
Rowland, R. J. ‘Numismatic propaganda under Cinna’, TAPAA 97
(1966) 407-19

Seltman, C. Greek Coins. London, 1933. 2nd edn 1955

Seyrig, M. ‘Le trésor monétaire de Nisibe’, RN 17 (1955) 85-128
Sherk, R. K. Rome and the Greek East to the Death of Augustus (Documents
in translation). Cambridge, 1984

240.
241.
242.
243.
244.
245.
246.

247.
248.

249.
250.

251.

252.

253.

254.

255.

256.

258.

259.
260.
261.

263.

ARCHAEOLOGY 821

Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘The date of the /ex repetundarum and _ its
consequences’, JRS 62 (1972) 83-99

Simonetta, B. ‘Notes on the coinage of the Cappadocian kings’, NC 1
(1961) 9-50

Simonetta, B. ‘Remarks on some Cappadocian problems’, NC 4 (1964)
83-92

Simonetta, B. The Coins of the Cappadocian Kings. Fribourg, 1977
Sokolowski, F. Lois sacrées de l’ Asie mineure. Paris, 1955

Sokolowski, F. Lois sacrées des cités grecques. Paris, 1969

Sumner, G. V. ‘The piracy law from Delphi and the law of the Cnidos
inscription’, GRBS 19 (1978) 211-25

Sydenham, E. A. The Coinage of the Roman Republic. London, 1952
Taylor, L. R. ‘Freedmen and freeborn in the epitaphs of imperial Rome’,
AJPh 82 (1961) 113-32

Thompson, M. The New Style Silver Coinage of Athens. New York, 1961
Torelli, M. R. ‘Una nuova iscrizione di Silla da Larino’, Athenaeum 51
(1973) 336-54

Vetter, E. Handbuch der italischen Dialekten. Heidelberg, 1953
Vinogradov, Y. G., Molyev, E. A. and Tolstikov, V. P. ‘New
epigraphical sources on the history of the Mithridatic period’ (Russ.),
Tskhaltubo 111, 589-600

Waddington, W. H., Babelon, E. and Reinach, T. Recueil général des
monnaies grecques d’ Asie Mineure 1.1, Pont et Paphlagonie. 2nd edn Paris,
1925

Walbank, F. W. ‘Via illa nostra militaris: some thoughts on the Via
Egnatia’, Althistorische Studien Hermann Bengtson zum 70. Geburtstag
dargebracht, ed. H. Heine et a/. (Historia Einzelschr. 11), Wiesbaden,
1983, 131-47 (=A 124, 193-209)

Walker, A. S. ‘Four AES coin hoards in the collection of the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens’, Hesperia 47 (1978) 40-9

Walker, D. R. The Metrology of the Roman Silver Coinage. Part 1: From
Augustus to Domitian (BAR Suppl. Ser. 5). Oxford, 1976

Weinstock, S. ‘Two archaic inscriptions from Latium’, JRS 50 (1960)
112-18

Welles, C. B. Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period. New Haven,
1934

Wiseman, T. P. ‘Viae Anniae’, PBSR 32 (1964) 21-37

Wiseman, T. P. ‘Viae Anniae again’, PBSR 37 (1969) 82-91

Yailenko, V. P. ‘New epigraphical data on Mithridates Eupator and
Pharnaces’ (Russ.), Ts&baltubo 111, 617-24

Zanker, P. ‘Grabreliefs rémischer Freigelassener’, [DAI 90 (1975)
267-315

Cc. ARCHAEOLOGY

Barker, G., Lloyd, J. and Webley, D. ‘A classical landscape in Molise’,
PBSR 46 (1978) 35—51

822

264.
265.
266.
267.
268.
269.

270.

271

272.
273.
274.

275.
276.

277.

278.

(279.
280.

282.

283.

284.

285.
286.
287.

288.

289.

B. SOURCES

Boethius, A. The Golden House of Nero: Some Aspects of Roman Architecture
(Jerome Lectures, ser. 5). Ann Arbor, 1960

Bruneau, P. and Ducat, J. Gwide de Délos. Paris, 1965

Callender, M. H. Roman Amphorae. London, 1965

Carandini, A. Settefinestre: una villa schiavistica nell’ Etruria romana. 3 vols.
Modena, 1985

Castagnoli, F. ‘Dedica arcaica lavinate a Castore e Polluce’, SMSR 30
(1959) 109-17

Castagnoli, F. ef a/. Lavinium 11 (Ist. di topografia antica dell’Univ. di
Roma). Rome, 1975

Celuzza, M. and Regoli, E. ‘La Valle d’Oro nel territorio di Cosa’, DArch
4 (1982) 31-62

Chouquer, G. ef al. Structures agraires en Italie centro-méridionale: Cadastres
et paysages ruraux (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 100). Rome, 1987

Coarelli, F. ‘Il complesso pompeiano di Campo Marzio e la sua
decorazione scultorea’, RPAA 44 (1971-2) 99-122

Coarelli, F., ed. Studi su Praeneste (Reprints di archeologia e di storia
antica). Perugia, 1978

Coarelli, F. ef al. L’area sacra di Largo Argentina (Studi e materiali dei
musei e monumenti comunali di Roma x). Rome, 1981

Coarelli, F. Fregellae. La storia e gli scavi. Rome, 1981

Coarelli, F. ‘L’ ‘‘agora des italiens”’ a Delo: il mercato degli schiavi?’, Delo
el’Italia 119-45

Coarelli, F. I/ foro romano 11: periodo repubblicano e augusteo. Rome, 1985
Coarelli, F. Fregellae 2. I! santuario di Esculapio. Rome, 1986

Coarelli, F. I santuari del Lagio in eta repubblicana,. Rome, 1987

Cotton, M. A. The Late Republican Villa at Posto, Francolise. Report of an
Excavation by the Institute of Fine Arts, New York and the British School at
Rome (British School at Rome Suppl. Pub.). London, 1979

Cotton, M. A. and Metraux, G. P. R. The San Rocco Villa at Francolise.
London, 1985

Coulton, J. J. The Architectural Development of the Greek Stoa. Oxford,
1976

Cozza, L. ‘Le tegole di marmo del Pantheon’, Citta e architettura nella
Roma imperiale (ARID Suppl. x), ed. K. de Fine Licht, Odense, 1983,
109-18

Crawford, M. H., Keppie, L., Patterson, J. and Vercnocke, M. L.
‘Excavations at Fregellae 1978-84. An interim report on the work of the
British team’, PBSR 52 (1984) 21-35; 53 (1985) 72-96; 54 (1986) 40-68
De Ruyt, C. Macellum: marché alimentaire des Romains. Louvain, 1985
Domergue, C. ‘Les lingots de plomb romains du Musée Archéologique
de Carthagéne et du Musée Naval de Madrid’, AEA 39 (1966) 41-72
Domergue, C., Laubenheimer-Leenhardt, F. and Liou, B. ‘Les lingots de
plomb de L. Carullius Hispallus’, RAN 7 (1974) 119-37

Dyson, S. A. ‘Settlement patterns in the Ager Cosanus: the Wesleyan
University Survey 1974-6’, JFA 5 (1978) 251-8

Ervin, M. ‘The sanctuary of Aglauros on the south slope of the

290.
291.
292.

293.

295.

296.

297.

298.
299.

300,
301,

302.
393.

304.
305.

306.

307.
308.

309.

310

311.

313.

314.

ARCHAEOLOGY 823

Acropolis and its destruction in the first Mithridatic war’, Arch. Pontou
22 (1958) 129-66

Fasolo, F. and Giulini, G. I/ santuario della Fortuna Primigenia a Palestrina.
2 vols. Rome, 1875

Flambard, J.-M. ‘Tabernae républicaines dans la zone du Forum de
Bolsena’, MEFRA 96 (1984) 207-59

Frederiksen, M. ‘The contribution of archaeology to the agrarian
problem in the Gracchan period’, Roma e I’ Italia, 330-67

Gatti lo Guzzo, L. I/ deposito votive dall’ Esquilino detto di Minerva Medica
(Studi e materiali di etruscologia e antichita italiche 17). Rome, 1978
Gertsiger, D. S. ‘A plastic vase from Panticapaeum (on the iconography
of Mithridates Eupator)’ (Russ.) Tsha/tubo 111, 13-14

Hackens, T. and Lévy, E. ‘Trésor hellénistique trouvé 4 Délos en 1964’,
BCH 89 (1965) 503-66

Heurgon, J. ‘L’Ombrie a l’époque des Gracques et de Sylla’, Problemi di
storia e archeologia dell’Umbria (Atti I Convegno di Studi Umbri, 1963),
Perugia, 1964, 113-31

Jacopi, I. ‘Area sacra dell’ Argentina: considerazioni sulla terza fase del
Tempio A’, BCAR 81 (1968/9) 115-25

Johnson, J. Excavations at Minturnae 11.1.Philadelphia, 1935

Jones, G. D. B. ‘Capena and the Ager Capenas’, PBSR 30 (1962) 116-207;
31 (1963) 100-58

Jones, G. D. B. ‘The Roman mines at Rio Tinto’, JRS 70 (1980) 146-65
Jones, G. D. B. ‘Il tavoliere romano: lagricoltura romana attraverso
Vaerofotografia e lo scavo’, ArchClass 32 (1980) 81-146

Kahane, A., Murray Threipland, L. and Ward-Perkins, J. “The Ager
Veientanus, north and east of Veii’, PBSR 36 (1968) 1-218

Laff, U. ‘Storia di Ascoli Piceno nell’eta antica’, Asculum 1 (see the
following item), xviii-xxi

Laff, U. and Pasquinucci, M. Asculum. 4 vols. Pisa, 1975-81
Lamboglia, N. Per una classificagione preliminare della ceramica campana.
Bordighera (Ist. di Studi Liguri), 1952

La Regina, A. ‘I territori sabellici e sannitici’, DArch 4-5 (1970-1)
443-59

La Regina, A. Sannio. Pentrie Frentani dal VI al I sec. a.C. Rome, 1980
Liverani, P. ‘L’ager Veientanus in eta repubblicana’, PBSR 52 (1984)
36-48

Manacorda, D. ‘The ager Cosanus and the production of the amphorae of
Sestius. New evidence and a reassessment’, J/RS 68 (1978) 122-31
Mertens, J. A/ba Fucens. 2 vols. Rome and Brussels, 1969

Painter, K., (ed.) Roman Villas in Italy. Recent Excavations and Research
(British Museum Occasional Papers 24). London, 1980

Palmer, R. E. A. ‘The neighborhood of Sullan Bellona at the Colline
Gate’, MEFRA 87 (1975) 653-65

Pensabene, P. ef al. Terracotte votive dal Tevere (Studi miscellanei 25).
Rome, 1980

Polverini, L., Parise, F., Agostini, S. and Pasquinucci, M. Firmum

824

315.

316.

317.
318.

319.

320.

321.

323.

324.

11.

12.
13.

Cc. POLITICAL HISTORY

Picenum 1. Pisa, 1987

Quilici, L. and Quilici Gigli, $. ‘Ville dell’Agro Cosano con fronte a
torrette’, RLA 3.1 (1970) 11-64

Schulten, A. Namantia. 4 vols. Munich, 1927-31

Sjéqvist, E. ‘Kaisareion’, ORom 1 (1954) 86-108

Staccioli, R. A. ‘Le tabernae a Roma attraverso la Forma Urbis’, RAL
8.14 (1959) 56-66

Thompson, D. B. ‘The garden of Hephaestus’, Hesperia 6 (1937) 396-425
Thompson, H. A. ‘Two centuries of Hellenistic pottery’, Hesperia 3
(1934) 311-480

Thompson, H. A. ‘Buildings on the west side of the Agora’, Hesperia 6
(1937) 1-226

Todua, T. ‘Forts of Mithridates VI Eupator in Colchis’ (Russ.), VDI
1988.1 (184) 139-46

Ward-Perkins, B., Mills, N., Gadd, D. and Delano Smith, C. ‘Luni and
the Ager Lunensis: the rise and fall of a Roman town and its territory’,
PBSR 54 (1986) 81-146

Young, R. S. ‘An industrial district of ancient Athens’, Hesperia 20 (1951)
135-288

C. POLITICAL HISTORY
a. 146-70 B.C.

Alexander, M. C. ‘Hortensius’ speech in defense of Verres’, Phoenix 30
(1976) 46-53

Astin, A. E. Scipio Aemilianus. Oxford, 1967

Aymard, A. ‘L’organisation de Macédoine en 167’, CPA 45 (1950)
96-107

Badian, E. ‘Lex Acilia Repetundarum’, A]Ph 75 (1954) 374-84

Badian, E. ‘The date of Pompey’s first triumph’, Hermes 83 (1955) 107-18
Badian, E. ‘Caepio and Norbanus’, Historia 6 (1957) 318-46 (=A 2,
34-70)

Badian, E. ‘Servilius and Pompey’s first triumph’, Hermes 89 (1961)
254-6

Badian, E. ‘Forschungsbericht. From the Gracchi to Sulla (1940-59)’,
Historia 11 (1962) 197-245 (= Seager, Crisis, 3-51)

Badian, E. ‘Waiting for Sulla’, JRS 52 (1962) 47-G1 (=A 2, 206-34)
Badian, E. ‘The /ex Thoria: a reconsideration’, Studi in onore di Biondo
Biondi 1, Milan, 1963, 187-96 (=A 2, 235-41)

Badian, E. ‘Sulla’s augurate’, Arethusa 1 (1968) 26~46

Badian, E. ‘Quaestiones Variae’, Historia 18 (1969) 447-91

Badian, E. Lucius Sulla the Deadly Reformer (7th Todd Memorial Lecture).
Sydney, 1970

Badian, E. ‘Additional notes on Roman magistrates’, Athenaeum 48
(1970) 3-14

Badian, E. ‘Roman politics and the Italians (133-91 B.c.)’, Romae I’ Italia,
373-409

18,
19.
20.
21.
22.
23:
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.

30.

44.
45.

46.

146-70 B.C. 825

Badian, E. ‘Tiberius Gracchus and the beginning of the Roman
Revolution’, ANRW 1.1 (1972) 668-731

Badian, E. ‘The death of Saturninus. Studies in chronology and
prosopography’, Chiron 14 (1984) 101-47

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. ‘Sulla Felix’, JRS 41 (1951) 1-10

Barnes, T. D. ‘A Marian colony’, CR 21 (1971) 332

Bates, R. L. ‘Rex in senatu’, PAPAS 130.3 (1986) 272-3

Bauman, R. A. ‘The 4ostis declarations of 88 and 87 B.c.’, Athenaeum 51
(1973) 270~93

Bell, M. J. V. ‘Tactical reform in the Roman Republican army’, Historia
14 (1965) 404-22

Bellen, H. ‘Sullas Brief an den Interrex L. Valerius Flaccus’, Historia 24
(1975) 555-69

Bennett, H. Cinna and his Times. Menasha, 1923

Bernstein, A. H. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. Ithaca, 1978

Berve, H. ‘Sertorius’, Hermes 64 (1929) 199-227

Boren, H. C. ‘The urban side of the Gracchan economic crisis’, AHR 63
(1957-8) 890-902 (= Seager, Crisis, 54-66)

Bruhns, H. ‘Ein politischer Kompromiss im Jahre 70: die lex Aurelia
indiciaria’, Chiron 10 (1976) 263-72

Brunt, P. A. ‘The equites in the late Republic’, Proc. and Int. Conf. of Ec.
Hist., 1962, 117-49 (= Seager, Crisis, 83-115), revd. in A 19, 144-93
Brunt, P. A. ‘The army and the land in the Roman Revolution’, J/RS 52
(1962) 64-86, revd. in A 19, 240-75

Brunt, P. A. ‘Italian aims at the time of the Social War’, JRS 55 (1965)
go-109, revd. in A 19, 93-143

Brunt, P. A. “Amicitia in the late Roman Republic’, PCPAS 2 (1965) 1-20
(= Seager, Crisis, 199-218), revd. in A 19, 351-81

Brunt, P. A. ‘Patronage and politics in the ‘‘Verrines”’’, Chiron 10 (1980)
273-8

Brant, P. A. ‘Nobilitas and Novitas’, JRS 72 (1982) 1-17

Bulst, C. M. ‘Cinnanum tempus’, Historia 13 (1964) 307-37
Carcopino, J. Autour des Gracques. Paris, 1928

Carcopino, J. Sy/la ou la monarchie manquée. Paris, 1947

Cardinali, G. Studi Graccani. Rome, 1912

Carney, T. F. ‘The flight and exile of Marius’, Ge>R 8 (1961) 98-121
Carney, T. F. ‘The death of Sulla’, AC/ass 4 (1961) 64-79

Carney, T. F. A Biography of Caius Marius (Proceedings of the African
Classical Associations Suppl. 1). 1962

Cary, M. ‘Sulla and Cisalpine Gaul’, CR 34 (1920) 103-4

Coarelli, F. ‘Le ¢yrannoctone du Capitole et la mort de Tiberius Gracchus’,
MEFRA 81 (1969) 137-60

Corbellini, G. ‘La presunta guerra tra Mario e Cinna e !’episodio dei
Bardiei’, Aevum 50 (1976) 154-6

Crawford, M. H. ‘The edict of M. Marius Gratidianus’, PCPAS 194
(1968) 1-4

von Domaszewski, A. Bellum Marsicum (SAWW 201.1). Vienna, 1924

826
47.

48.
49.

56.
57:

58.
59:
6o.

61.
62.

63.

64.

66.
67.

68.
69.

7O.
71.

72.
73.

Cc. POLITICAL HISTORY

Earl, D. C. Tiberius Gracchus — A Study in Politics (Coll. Latomus 66).
Brussels, 1963

Ericsson, H. ‘Sulla felix’, Eranos 41 (1943) 77-89

Ferrary, J.-L. “Recherches sur la législation de Saturninus et de Glaucia’,
MEFRA 89 (1977) 619-60; 91 (1979) 85-134

Ferrary, J.-L. ‘Les origines de la loi de majesté a Rome’, CR AI 1983,
556-72

Fraccaro, P. Studi sull’eta dei Gracchi. Citta di Castello, 1914

Frank, T. ‘On some financial legislation of the Sullan period’, AJPA 54
(1933) 54-8

Frier, B. W. ‘Sulla’s propaganda: the collapse of the Cinnan Republic’,
AJPh 92 (1971) 585604

Gabba, E. ‘Politica e cultura in Roma agli inizi del I secolo a.C.’,
Athenaeum 31 (1953) 259-72

Gabba, E. Esercito e societa nella tarda Repubblica romana. Florence, 1973.
Transl. by P. J. Cuffas Republican Rome: The Army and the Allies, Oxford,
1976

Gabba, E. ‘Mario e Silla’, ANRW 1.1 (1972) 764-805

Gabba, E. ‘Motivazioni economiche nell’opposizione alla legge agraria
di Tib. Sempronio Gracco’, Polis and Imperium, Studies in honour of Edward
Togo Salmon, ed. J. A. S. Evans, Toronto, 1974, 129-38

Gabba, E. ‘La rifondazione di Salapia’, Athenaeum 61 (1983) 514-16
Gabba, E. ‘Un episodio oscuro della storia di Mediolanum’, RIL 118
(1984) 99-103

Garnsey, P. and Rathbone, D. ‘The background to the grain law of
Gaius Gracchus’, JRS 75 (1985) 20-5

Garton, C. ‘Sulla and the theatre’, Phoenix 18 (1964) 137~50

Gelzer, M. ‘Cn. Pompeius Strabo und der Aufstieg seines Sohnes
Magnus’, Add. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. 14, 1941 (=A 41, U, 106-38)
Gelzer, M. ‘Hat Sertorius in seinem Vertrag mit Mithradates die Provinz
Asia abgetreten?’, Phil. Wochenschr. 52 (1932) 185-92 (=A 41, UH, 139-45)
Gillis, D. ‘Quintus Sertorius’, RIL 103 (1969) 711-27

Gohler, J. Row und Italien. Die rémische Bundesgenossenpolitik von den
Anfangen bis zum Bundesgenossenkrieg (Breslauer Historische Forschungen
13). Breslau, 1939, repr. Aalen, 1974

Gruen, E. S. ‘The lex Varia’, JRS 55 (1965) 59-73

Gruen, E. S. ‘The political allegiance of P. Mucius Scaevola’, Athenaeum
43 (1965) 321-32

Gruen, E. S. Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts, 149-78 B.C.
Cambridge, MA, 1968

Gruen, E. S. ‘Pompey, Metellus Pius, and the trials of 70-69 B.c.’, AJ Ph
92 (1971) 1-16

Guarino, A. La coerenza di Publio Mucio. Naples, 1981

Hackl, U. Senat und Magistratur in Rom von der Mitte des 2. Jabrhunderts v.
Chr. bis zur Diktatur Sullas. Kallmiinz, 1982

Hall, U. ‘Notes on M. Fulvius Flaccus’, Athenaeum 55 (1977) 280-8
Hantos, T. Res publica constituta: die Verfassung des Diktators Sulla (Hermes

74.
75.
77:
78.
79:
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.

86.

91.
92.
93:
94.
95:

96.
97:

98.
99.

100.
101,
102.

103,

146-70 B.C. 827

E:ngelschr. 50). Stuttgart, 1988

Haug, I. ‘Der romische Bundesgenossenkrieg 91-88 v. Chr. bei Titus
Livius’, WJA 2 (1947) 100-39

Hayne, L. ‘M. Lepidus (cos. 78): a re-appraisal’, Historia 21 (1972) 661-8
Henderson, M. I. ‘The establishment of the equester ordo’, JRS 53
(1963) 61-72 (= Seager, Crisis 69-80)

Heurgon, J. ‘The date of Vegoia’s prophecy’, JRS 49 (1959) 41-5

Hill, H. ‘Sulla’s new senators in 81 B.c.’, CQ 26 (1932) 170-7

Katz, B. R. ‘The first fruits of Sulla’s march’, AC/ass 44 (1975) 100-25
Katz, B. R. ‘The siege of Rome in 87 B.c.’, CP 71 (1976) 328-36

Katz, B. R. ‘Studies on the period of Cinna and Sulla’, AC/ass 45 (1976)
497-549

Katz, B. R. ‘Caesar Strabo’s struggle for the consulship — and more’,
RAM 120 (1977) 45-63

Katz, B. R. “The selection of L. Cornelius Merula’, RAM 122 (1979)
162-6

Keaveney, A. ‘Pompeius Strabo’s second consulship’, CQ 28 (1978)
240-1

Keaveney, A. ‘Sulla, Sulpicius and Caesar Strabo’, Latomus 38 (1979)
451-60

Keaveney, A. ‘Deux dates contestées de la carriére de Sylla’, LEC 48
(1980) 149-59

Keaveney, A. Sulla, the last Republican. London, 1982

Keaveney, A. ‘Young Pompey: 106~79 B.c.’, AC/ass 51 (1982) 111-39
Keaveney, A. ‘Sulla and Italy’, CS 19 (1982) 499-544

Keaveney, A. ‘Sulla augur: coins and curiate law’, AJAH 7 (1982)
150-71

Keaveney, A. ‘What happened in 88°’, Esrene 20 (1983) 53-86
Keaveney, A. ‘Studies in the dominatio Sullae’, Klio 65 (1983) 185-208
Keaveney, A. ‘Who were the Sullani?’, K/io 66 (1984) 114-50
Keaveney, A. Rome and the Unification of Italy. London, 1987
Keaveney, A. and Madden, J. A. ‘Phthiriasis and its victims’, SO 57
(1982) 87-99

Laff, U. ‘Il mito di Silla’, Athenaeum 45 (1967) 177-213; 255-77
Levick, B. M. ‘Sulla’s march on Rome in 88 B.c.’, Historia 31 (1982)
503-8

Lewis, R. G. ‘A problem in the siege of Praeneste’, PBSR 39 (1971) 32-9
Lintott, A. W. “The tribunate of P. Sulpicius Rufus’, CQ 21 (1971)
442-53

Lintott, A. W. ‘The offices of C. Flavius Fimbria in 86-5 B.c.’, Historia 20
(1971) 696-701

Luce, T. J. “Marius and the Mithridatic command’, Historia 19 (1970)
161-94

Luraschi, G. ‘Sulle “‘leges de civitate” (Iulia, Calpurnia, Plautia Papiria)’,
SDHI 44 (1978) 321-70

McDermott, W. C. ‘Lex de tribunicia potestate (70 B.c.)’, CPA 72 (1977)
49-52

828
104.
105.
106,
107.
108.

109.

110.

112.

113.

114.

115.

116,

117.

118.

119.

121.

122.
123.

124.
125.
126.
127.
128.

129.

130.

C. POLITICAL HISTORY

Marino, R. E. ‘Aspetti della politica interna di Silla’, A.APal 33 (1973-4)
361-529

Maroti, E. ‘On the problems of M. Antonius Creticus’ imperium
infinitum , A_AntHung 19 (1971) 252-72

Marshall, B. A. ‘Crassus’ ovation in 71 3.C.’, Historia 21 (1972) 669-73
Marshall, B. A. ‘The /ex Plotia agraria’, Antichthon 6 (1972) 43-52
Marshall, B. A. ‘Crassus and the command against Spartacus’, Athenaeum
51 (1973) 109-21

Marshall, B. A. ‘Q. Cicero, Hortensius and the lex Aurelia’, RAM 118
(1975) 136-52

Marshall, B. A. ‘Catilina and the execution of M. Marius Gratidianus’,
CQ 79 (1985) 124-33

Mattingly, H. B. ‘The consilium of Cn. Pompeius Strabo’, Athenaeum 53
(1975) 262-6

Meyer, H. D. ‘Die Organisation der Italiker im Bundesgenossenkrieg’,
Historia 7 (1958) 74-9

Millar, F. G. B. ‘Politics, persuasion and the people before the Social War
(150-90 B.c.)’, JRS 76 (1986) 1-11

Mitchell, T. N. ‘The volte-face of P. Sulpicius Rufus in 88 B.c.’, CPA 70
(1975) 197-204

Nicolet, C. ‘L’inspiration de Tiberius Gracchus’, REA 67 (1965) 142~58
Nicolet, C., (ed.), Demokratia et Aristokratia. A propos de Caius Gracchus:
mots grecs et réalités romaines. Paris, 1983

Passerini, A. ‘Caio Mario come uomo politico’, Athenaeum 12 (1934) 10-
44; 109-143; 257-97; 348-80 (= Studi su Caio Mario, Milan, 1971)
Porra, F. ‘La legge Varia del 90 e quella Sulpicia dell’88 a.C.: il problema
degli esuli’, AFLC 36 (1973) 13-28

Pozzi, E. ‘Studi sulla guerra civile Sillana’, Attir. accademia delle scienge di
Torino 49 (1913/14) 641-79

Pritchard, R. T. ‘Verres and the Sicilian farmers’, Historia 20 (1971)
224-38

Rich, J. W. ‘The supposed Roman manpower shortage of the later
second century B.c.’, Historia 32 (1983) 287-331

Richard, J.-C. ‘Oualis pater, talis filins’, RPh 46 (1972) 43-55
Richardson, J. S. “The ownership of Roman land: Tiberius Gracchus and
the Italians’, JRS 70 (1980) 1-11

Rose, H. J. ‘The ‘‘Oath of Philippus” and the Di Indigetes’, HTR 30
(1937) 165-81

Rossi, R. F. ‘Sulla lotta politica in Roma dopo la morte di Silla’, PP 20
(1965) 133-52

Salmon, E. T. ‘Notes on the Social War’, TAPAA 87 (1958) 159-84
Salmon, E. T. ‘The causes of the Social War’, Phoenix 16 (1962) 112-13
Salmon, E. T. ‘Sulla redux’, Athenaeum 42 (1964) 60-79

de Sanctis, G. La guerra sociale (Opera inedita a cura di L. Polverini).
Florence, 1976

Scardigli, B. ‘Sertorio: problemi cronologici’, Athenaeum 49 (1971)
229-70

131.

131A.
132.

133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
140.

141,
142.

144.
145.
146.
147.

148.

149.
150.

151.

152.

153.
154.
155.

156.

70-43 B.C. 829

Schneider, H. ‘Die politische Rolle der plebs urbana wahrend der
Tribunate des L. Appuleius Saturninus’, AmcSoc 13/14 (1982/3) 193-221
Schulten, A. Sertorius. Leipzig, 1926

Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘Violence in Roman politics’, JRS 46 (1956) 1-9
(= Seager, Crisis, 151-9)

Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘The /ex repetundarum and the political ideas of
Gaius Gracchus’, JRS 72 (1982) 18-31

Smith, R. E. ‘The /ex Plotia agraria and Pompey’s Spanish veterans’, CO
§1 (1957) 82-5

Smith, R. E. ‘Pompey’s conduct in 80 and 77 B.c.’, Phoenix 14 (1960)
I-13

Stockton, D. L. ‘The first consulship of Pompey’, Historia 22 (1973)
205-18

Stockton, D. L. The Gracchi. Oxford, 1979

Sumner, G. V. ‘The Pompeii in their families’, AJAH 2 (1977) 8-25
Sumner, G. V. ‘Sulla’s career in the 90s’, Athenaeum 56 (1978) 395-6
Taylor, L. R. ‘Caesar’s early career’, CPA 36 (1941) 113-32

Taylor, L. R. ‘Forerunners of the Gracchi’, JRS 52 (1962) 19-27
Tibiletti, G. ‘Il possesso dell’ager publicus e le norme de modo agrorum sino
al Gracchi’, Athenaeum 26 (1948) 173-236; 27 (1949) 3-41

Tibiletti, G. ‘Ricerche di storia agraria romana’, Athenaeum 28 (1950)
183-266

Treves, P. ‘Sertorio’, Athenaeum 10 (1932) 127-46

Tuplin, C. ‘Coelius or Cloelius?’, Chiron 9 (1979) 137-45

Turcan, R. ‘Encore la prophétie de Végoia’, Mé/. Heurgon 11, 1009-19
Twyman, B. L. ‘The Metelli, Pompeius and prosopography’, ANRW
1.1 (1972) 816-74

Twyman, B. L. ‘The date of Pompeius Magnus’ first triumph’, Studies in
Latin Literature and Roman History 1, ed. C. Deroux (Coll. Latomus 164),
Brussels, 1979, 175-208

Ward, A. M. ‘Cicero and Pompey in 75 and 70 B.c.’, Latomus 29 (1970)
58-71

Ward, A. M. ‘The early relationships between Cicero and Pompey until
80 B.C.’, Phoenix 24 (1970) 119-29

Ward, A. M. ‘Caesar and the pirates 11’, AJAH 2 (1977) 26-36

b. Jo-43 B.C.

Adcock, F. E. ‘Caesar’s dictatorship’, CAH 1x (1932) 691-740
Alféldi, A. Studien uber Caesars Monarchie (Bull. Soc. des Lettres de Lund
1952/3 1). Lund, 1953

Alfoldi, A. ‘Caesars Tragodie im Spiegel der Miinzprigung des Jahres 44
v. Chr.’, Schweizer Miinzblatter 4 (1953) 1-11

Alfoldi, A. ‘Der Machtverheissende Traum des Sulla’, JBM 41/2 (1961/
2) 275-88 (=C 158, 3-16)

Alfoldi, A. ‘Der Mettius-Denar mit Caesar dict. quart.’, Schweizer
Minzblatter 13/14 (1962/3) 29-33 (=C 158, 17-33)

830

157.
158.

159.

160.
161.

163.

164.

166.
167.

168.
169.
170.
171.

172.

173.

174.

176.
177.

178.

179.

180.

C. POLITICAL HISTORY

Alfoldi, A. Oktavians Aufstieg zur Macht (Antiquitas Reihe 1). Bonn, 1976
Alféldi, A. Caesariana. Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Geschichte Caesars und
seiner Zeit, ed. E. Alfoldi-Rosenbaum. Bonn, 1984

Alfoldi, A. Caesar in 4g v. Chr. 1: Studien zu Caesars Monarchie und ihren
Wurzeln, ed. H. Wolff. Bonn, 1985

Allen, W., jr. ‘Cicero’s house and /ibertas’, TAPhA 75 (1944) 1-9
Allen, W., jr., ‘Cicero’s provincial governorship in 63 8.c.’, TAPAA 83
(1952) 233~41

Badian, E. ‘M. Porcius Cato and the annexation and early administration
of Cyprus’, JRS 55 (1965) 110-21

Badian, E. ‘Notes on provincia Gallia in the late Republic’, Mélanges
a archéologie et d'histoire offerts a André Piganiol, ed. R. Chevallier, Paris,
1966, 901-18

Badian, E. ‘Marius’ villas: the evidence of the slave and the knave’, /RS
63 (1973) 121-32

Badian, E. ‘The attempt to try Caesar’, Polis and Imperium: Studies in honour
of Edward Togo Salmon, ed. J. A. S. Evans, Toronto, 1974, 145-66
Badian, E. ‘The case of the cowardly tribune’, AHB 3 (1989) 78-84
Balsdon, J. P. V. D. ‘Consular provinces under the late Republic’, JRS
29 (1939) 57-73

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. ‘Roman history, 65—50 B.c.: five problems’, JRS 52
(1962) 134-41

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. Julius Caesar and Rome. London, 1967

Bengtson, H. Zur Geschichte des Brutus. Munich, 1970

Bengtson, H. ‘Die letzten Monate der romischen Senatsherrschaft’,
ANRIF 1.1 (1972) 967-81 ( = Kleine Schriften zur alten Geschichte, Munich,
1974, 532-48)

Bengtson, H. ‘Untersuchungen zum mutinensischen Krieg’, Kéeine
Schriften zur alten Geschichte, Munich, 1974, 479-531

Benner, H. Die Politik des P. Clodius Pulcher (Historia Einzelschr. 50).
Stuttgart, 1987

van Berchem, D. ‘La fuite de Decimus Brutus’, Mélanges d’arch.,
d épigraphie et a’hist. offerts a J. Carcopino, Paris, 1966, 941-53

Bitto, I. ‘La concessione del patronato nella politics di Cesare’,
Epigraphica 31 (1970) 79-83

Boegli, H. Studien zu den Koloniegriindungen Caesars. Diss. Basle, 1966
Botermann, H. Die Soldaten und die rimische Politik in der Zeit von Caesars
Tod bis zur Begriindung des zweiten Triumvirats (Zetemata 46). Munich, 1968
Braund, D. C. ‘Gabinius, Caesar, and the publicani of Judaea’, Klio 65
(1983) 241-4

Broughton, T. R. S. ‘More notes on Roman magistrates’, TAP/A 79
(1948) 63-78

Bruhns, H. Casar und die rimische Oberschicht, 49-44 v. Chr. (Hypomnemata
53). Géttingen, 1978

Burckhardt, L. A. Polstische Strategien der Optimaten in der spdten romischen
Repablig (Historia Einzelschr. 57). Stuttgart, 1988

Burns, A. ‘Pompey’s strategy and Domitius’ stand at Corfinium’,

183.

183A,

184.

185.
186.

187.
188.
189.
190.
191.
192.
193.
194.
195.
196,

197.
198.

199.
200.
202.
203.

204.
205.

206.
207.
208,

70-43 B.C. 831

Historia 15 (1966) 74-95

Carson, R. A. G. ‘Caesar and the monarchy’, Ge”R 4 (1957) 46-53.

Cesare nel bimillenario della morte. Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1956.

Coarelli, F. ‘Iside Capitolina, Clodio e i mercanti di schiavi’, Alessandria e

il mondo ellenistico-romano. Studi in onore di Achille Adriani, ed. N. Bonacasa

and A. Di Vita (Studie materiali Ist. arch. Univ. Palermo 4-6) 111, Rome,

1984, 461-75

Cobban, J. Senate and Provinces 78-49 8.c. Cambridge, 1935

Collins, J. H. ‘Caesar and the corruption of power’, Historia 4 (1955)

445~65

Crawford, M. H. ‘The lex Iulia agraria’, Athenaeum 67 (1989) 179-90

Dahlmann, H. ‘Clementia Caesaris’, Nene Jabrbicher fir Wissenschaft und

Jugendbildung 10 (1934) 17-26 (= Wege der Forschung 43, Darmstadt,

1967, 32-47)

De Visscher, F. ‘Jules César patron d’Alba Fucens’, AC 33 (1964) 98-

107

Dobesch, G. Caesars Apotheose zu Lebzeiten und sein Ringen um den

Kénigstitel. Vienna, 1966

Eckhardt, K. ‘Die armenischen Feldztige des Lucullus’, K/io 9 (1909)

400-12; 10 (1910) 73-115 and 192-231

Ehrenberg, V. ‘Caesar’s final aims’, HSP+ 68 (1964) 149-61

Flambard, J.-M. ‘Clodius, les colléges, la plébe et les esclaves.

Recherches sur la politique populaire au milieu du ter siécle’, MEFRA

89 (1977) 115-56

Frisch, H. Cicero’s Fight for the Republic. Copenhagen, 1946

von Fritz, K. ‘The mission of L. Caesar and L. Roscius in January 49
c., TAPAA 72 (1941) 125—42

von Fritz, K. ‘Pompey’s policy before and after the outbreak of the Civil

War of 49 B.c.’, TAPAA 73 (1942) 145-80

Geiger, J. ‘M. Favonius: three notes’, RSA 4 (1974) 161-70

Gelzer, M. Caesar der Politiker und Staatsmann. Stuttgart and Berlin, 1921.

6th edn, Wiesbaden, 1960, transl. by P. Needham, Oxford, 1969

Gelzer, M. ‘Das erste Konsulat des Pompeius und die Ubertragung der

grossen Imperien’, Abd. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. 1943, 1 (=A 41 11, 146-89)

Gelzer, M. Pompeius. Munich, 1949. 2nd edn, 1959

Gesche, H. ‘Hat Caesar den Oktavian zum magister equitum designiert?’,

Historia 22 (1973) 468-78

Gesche, H. Caesar. Darmstadt, 1976

Girardet, K. ‘Die Lex Iulia de provinciis: Vorgeschichte, Inhalt,

Wirkungen’, RAM 130 (1987) 291-330

Grant, M. From Imperium to Auctoritas. Cambridge, 1946

Greece and Rome tv no.1, March 1957. Julius Caesar 44 B.C.-A.D. 1957,

Bimillenary Number

Greenhalgh, P. Pompey, the Roman Alexander. London, 1980

Griffin, M. ‘The tribune C. Cornelius’, JRS 63 (1973) 196-213

Gruen, E. S. ‘The consular elections for 53 B.c.’, Hommages a Marcel

Revard, ed. J. Bibauw (Coll. Latomus 102) 11, Brussels, 1969, 311-21

832

209.

210.

211.

212.

213.

214.

215.

216.
217,

218.

219.
220.

221,

223.
224.

225.

226.
227.

228.

229.

230.
231.

232,

233.

234.

235.
236.

C. POLITICAL HISTORY

Gruen, E. S. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1974

Hardy, E. G. Some Problems in Roman History. Ten Essays bearing on the
Administrative and Legislative Work of Julius Caesar. Oxford, 1924
Hardy, E. G. The Catilinarian Conspiracy in its Context: a Re-Study of the
Evidence. Oxford, 1924

Henderson, M. I., ‘Julius Caesar and Latium in Spain’, JRS 32 (1942)
1-13

Hinrichs, F. T. ‘Das legale Landversprechen im Bellum Civile’, Historia
18 (1969) 521-44

Horsfall, N. “The Ides of March: some new problems’, Ge>R 21 (1974)
191-9

Kraft, K. ‘Der goldene Kranz Caesars und der Kampf um die
Entlarvung des “Tyrannen”’, JNG 3/4 (1952/3) 7-98

Lacey, W. K. ‘The tribunate of Curio’, Historia 10 (1961) 318-29
Lacey, W. K. Cicero and the End of the Roman Republic. London, Sydney,
Auckland and Toronto, 1978

Leach, J. Pompey the Great. London, 1978

Linderski, J. ‘Cicero and Sallust on Vargunteius’, Historia 12 (1963)
g11-12

Linderski, J. “The aedileship of Favonius, Curio the Younger and
Cicero’s election to the augurate’, HS Ph 76 (1972) 181-200

Linderski, J. ‘Rome, Aphrodisias and the Res Gestae: the Genera Militiae
and the status of Octavian’, JRS 74 (1984) 74-80

Lintott, A. W. ‘P. Clodius Pulcher — Felix Catilina?’, Ge~R 14 (1967)
157-69

Lintott, A. W. ‘Cicero and Milo’, JRS 64 (1974) 62-78

Lintott, A. W. ‘Cicero on praetors who failed to abide by their edicts’,
CQ 27 (1977) 184-6

McDonald, W. ‘Clodius and the Lex Aelia Fufia’, JRS 19 (1929) 164-79
Marshall, B. A. Crassus. Amsterdam, 1976

Meyer, E. Caesars Monarchie und das Prinzipat des Pompetus. Innere
Geschichte Roms von 66 bis 44 v. Chr. 1918. 3rd edn, Stuttgart and Berlin,
1922

Mitchell, T. N. Cicero: The Ascending Years. London, 1979

Mommsen, Th. Die Rechtsfrage zwischen Caesar und dem Senat. Breslau,
1857 (=A 78, 92-145)

Moreau, P. Clodiana religio: un proces politique en 61 av. J.-C. Paris, 1982
Miinzer, F. ‘Aus dem Verwandtenkreis Caesars und Oktavians’, Hermes
71 (1936) 222-30

Nicolet, C. ‘Plébe et tribus: les statues de Lucius Antonius et le testament
d’Auguste’, MEFR A 97 (1985) 799-832

van Ooteghem, J]. Pompée le grand, batisseur d’empire. Brussels, 1954
Oppermann, H. Caesar, Wegbereiter Europas. Gottingen, 1958. znd edn,
196

Pelling, C. G. R. ‘Plutarch and Catiline’, Hermes 113 (1985) 311-29
Phillips, E. J. ‘Cicero and the prosecution of C. Manilius’, Latomus 29

237.

239.

240.
241.

242.
243.

244.
245.

246.
247.
248.

249.

250.

2g.
2952.

253.

254.
255.

256.
257.

258.
259.
260.

261.

262.

7O—-43 B.C. 833

(1970) 595-607

Phillips, E. J. ‘The prosecution of C. Rabirius in 63 B.c.’, Kio 56 (1974)
87-101

Raaflaub, K. Dignitatis Contentio. Studien zur Motivation und politische
Taktik im Birgerkrieg zwischen Caesar und Pompeius (Vestigia 20). Munich,
1974

Ramsey, J. T. “The prosecution of C. Manilius in 66 .c. and Cicero’s pro
Manilio’, Phoenix 34 (1980) 323-36

Raubitschek, A. E. ‘Brutus in Athens’, Phoenix 11 (1957) 1-11
Raubitschek, A. E. ‘The Brutus statue in Athens’, Ati III cong. internat.
epigr. gr. e lat., Rome, 1959, 15-21

Rawson, B. The Politics of Friendship: Pompey and Cicero. Sydney, 1978
Rawson, E. D. ‘The eastern clientelae of Clodius and the Claudii’,
Historia 22 (1973) 219-39 (=A 94A, 102-24)

Rawson, E. D. Cicero. A Portrait. London, 1975

Rawson, E..D. ‘Caesar’s heritage: Hellenistic kings and their Roman
equals’, JRS 65 (1975) 148-59 (=A 94A, 169-88)

Rawson, E. D. ‘Caesar, Etruria and the Disciplina Etrusca’, JRS 68
(1978) 132-52 (=A 94a, 289-323)

Rawson, E. D. ‘Crassorum funera’, Latomus 41 (1982) 540-9 (=A 944,
416-26)

Rawson, E. D. ‘Cicero and the Areopagus’, Athenaeum 63 (1985) 44-67
(=A 944, 444-67)

Rawson, E. D. ‘Cassius and Brutus: the memory of the Liberators’, Past
Perspectives: Studies in Greek and Roman Historical Writing, ed. 1. Moxon et
al., Cambridge, 1986, 101~19 (=A 94A, 488-507)

Rawson, E. D. ‘Discrimina ordinum: the Lex Iulia Theatralis’, PBSR 55
(1987) 83-114 (=A 94A, 508-45)

Rice Holmes, T. The Roman Republic. 2 vols. Oxford, 1923

Rice Holmes, T. The Architect of the Roman Empire. 2 vols. Oxford,
1928-31

Sandford, E. M. ‘The career of Aulus Gabinius’, TAP)A 70 (1939)
64-92

Scardigli, B. ‘Il falso Mario’, SIFC 52 (1980) 207-21

Schmitthenner, W. ‘Oktavian und das Testament Casars’ (Zetemata 4).
Munich, 1952, revd. 1973

Seager, R. ‘The first Catilinarian conspiracy’, Historia 13 (1964) 338-47
Seager, R. ‘The tribunate of Cornelius: some ramifications’, Hom mages a
Marcel Renard, ed. J. Bibauw (Coll. Latomus 102) 11, Brussels, 1969, 680—
6

Seager, R. Pompey, A Political Biography. Oxford, 1979

Shackleton Bailey, D. R. ‘Expectatio Corfiniensis’, ]RS 46 (1956) 57-64
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. ‘The credentials of L. Caesar and L. Roscius’,
JRS 50 (1960) 80-3

Shackleton Bailey, D. R. ‘Points concerning Caesar’s legislation in 59
B.C.’, in B 108, 1, 406-8

Shackleton Bailey, D. R. Cicero. London, 1971

834
263.

264.

265.
266.

267.
268.
269.
270.
271,
272.
273.
274.

275.
276.

277.

286.
287.

288.
289.

290.

C. POLITICAL HISTORY

Smith, R. E. Cicero the Statesman. Cambridge, 1966

Sordi, M. ‘Ottaviano patrono di Taranto nel 43 a.C.’, Epigraphica 41
(1969) 79-83

Sternkopf, W. ‘Lex Antonia agraria’, Hermes 47 (1912) 146-51
Sternkopf, W. ‘Die Verteilung der rémischen Provinzen vor dem
mutinensischen Krieg’, Hermes 47 (1912) 321-401

Stockton, D. Cicero. A Political Biography. Oxford, 1971

Sumner, G. V. ‘Manius or Mamercus?’, [RS 54 (1964) 41-8

Sumner, G. V. ‘Cicero, Pompeius and Rullus’, TAPAA 97 (1966)
569-82

Sumner, G. V. ‘A note on Julius Caesar’s great-grandfather’, CPA 71
(1976) 341-4

Syme, R. ‘Who was Decidius Saxa?’, JRS 27 (1937) 127-37 (=A 1191,
31-41).

Syme, R. ‘Caesar, the Senate and Italy’, PBSR 14 (1938) 1-32 (=A 119, 1,
88-119)

Syme, R. ‘The allegiance of Labienus’, /RS 28 (1938) 113-28 (=A 119, I,
62-75)

Syme, R. ‘Imperator Caesar: a study in nomenclature’, Historia 7 (1958)
172-88 (=A 119, I, 360-77)

Syme, R. ‘Ten tribunes’, JRS 53 (1963) 55-Go (=A 119, 11, 557-65)
Syme, R. ‘Senators, tribes and towns’, Historia 13 (1964) 105-25 (=A
119, 11, §82—-Go4)

Taylor, L. R. ‘On the chronology of Caesar’s first consulship’, AJP 72
(1951) 254-68

Treu, M. ‘Zur Clementia Caesaris’, MH 5 (1948) 197-217
Vanderbroeck, P. J. J. Popular Leadership and Collective Behavior in the Late
Roman Republic. Amsterdam, 1987

Ward, A. M. Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic. Columbia, MO,
1

Weippert, O. Alexander-Imitatio und rémiscthe Politik in republikanischer
Zeit (Diss. Wurzburg, 1970). Augsburg, 1972

Wirszubski, C. ‘Cicero’s cum dignitate otium: a reconsideration’, JRS 44
(1954) 1-13 (= Seager, Crisis, 183-95)

Wiseman, T. P. ‘The ambitions of Quintus Cicero’, J/RS 56 (1966) 108—
1§, repr. in A 133, 34-41

Wiseman, T. P. ‘Two friends of Clodius in Cicero’s letters’, CQ 18 (1968)
297-302

Wiseman, T. P. Cinna the Poet and other Roman Essays. Leicester, 1974
Wiseman, T. P. Catullus and his World: a Reappraisal. Cambridge, 1985
Wisttand, E. ‘The date of Curio’s African campaign’, Eranos 61 (1963)
38-44

Wistrand, E. The Policy of Brutus the Tyrannicide. Gothenburg, 1981
Wistrand, M. Cicero Imperator. Studies in Cicero’s Correspondence $ 1-47 B.C.
Gothenburg, 1979

Yavetz, Z. Caesar in der offentlichen Meinung. Dusseldorf, 1979, transl. as
Julius Caesar and his Public Image, London, 1983

Il.

12
13.

14.

16.
17.

18,

20,

21.

22.

MITHRIDATICA 835

D. THE EAST
a. MITHRIDATICA

Anderson, J. G. C. ‘Pompey’s campaign against Mithridates’, J/RS 12
(1922) 99-105

Badian, E. ‘Q. Mucius Scaevola and the province of Asia’, Athenaeum 34
(1956) 104-23

Badian, E. ‘Sulla’s Cilician command’, A/shenaenm 37 (1959) 2797-303
(=A 2, 157-78)

Badian, E. ‘Rome, Athens and Mithridates’, Assimilation et résistance a la
culture gréco-romaine dans le monde ancien. Travaux du VI. congrés internat. dela
FIEC, Madrid, Sept. 1974, ed. D. M. Pippidi, Bucharest, 1976, 501-22
(= AJAH 1 (1976) 105~28)

Blavatskaya, T. V. Zapadnopontiiskiye Goroda v VII-I Vyekakh do nashei
Ery (West Pontic Cities in the Seventh to First Centuries p.c.). Moscow, 1952
Brashinsky, J. B. ‘The economic links of Sinope in the fourth to second
centuries B.c.’ (Russ.), Amtichny Gorod, Moscow, 1963, 132-44
Castagna, M. Mitridate VI Eupatore re del Ponto. Portici, 1938

Chapot, V. La province romaine proconsulaire d’ Asie depuis ses origines jusqu'a
la fin du Haut-Empire. Paris, 1904

Danov, C. M. Zapadnyat Bryag na Chernomorye v Drevnostata (The West
Coast of the Black Sea in Antiquity). Sofia, 1947

Deininger, J. Der politische Widerstand gegen Rom in Griechenland 217-86 v.
Chr. Berlin and New York, 1971

Desideri, P. ‘Posidonio e la guerra mitridatica’, Athenaeum 51 (1973) 3-
29 and 238-69

Diehl, E. ‘Pharnakes’, RE 19 (1938) 1849~53

Dow, S. ‘A leader of the anti-Roman party in Athens in 88 B.c.’, CPA 37
(1947) 311-14

Dundua, G. F. and Lordkipanidze, G. A. ‘Georgia and Mithridates VP
(Russ.), Tshhaltubo 111, 601-8

Fletcher, W. G. ‘The Pontic cities of Pompey the Great’, TAPAA 70
(1939) 17-29

Geyer, F. ‘Mithridates’ (1 and 3-15), RE 15 (1932) 2157-206

Glew, D. G. ‘The selling of the king: a note on Mithridates Eupator’s
propaganda in 88 B.c., Hermes 105 (1977) 253-6

Glew, D. G. ‘Mithridates Eupator and Rome: a study of the background
of the first Mithridatic war’, Athenaeum 55 (1977) 380-405

Glew, D. G. “Between the wars: Mithridates Eupator and Rome, 85-73
B.C.’, Chiron 11 (1981) 109-20

Gozalishvili, G. V. Mif’ridat Pontiisky (Georgian, with Russian
summary). Tbilisi, 1965

Gross, W. H. ‘Die Mithridates-Kapelle auf Delos’, Ae>A 4 (1954)
10§—17

Habicht, C. ‘Zur Geschichte Athens in der Zeit Mithridates’ VI’, Chiron
6 (1976) 127-42

836
23.
2k.
25.

26.
27.

28.
29.

30.
31,

32.

38.

39.
4o.

4l.
42.

42A.

43.
44.
45.
47.

48.

D. THE EAST

Hammond, N.G. L. ‘The two battles of Chaeronea, 338 and 86 B.c.’, K/io
31 (1938) 186-201

Havas, L. ‘Mithridate et son plan d’attaque contre I’Italie’, ACD 4 (1968)
13-25

Karyshkovsky, P. O. ‘On the title of Mithridates Eupator’ (Russ.),
Tskhaltubo 11, 572-81

Kleiner, G. ‘Bildnis und Gestalt des Mithridates’, JD.AI 68 (195 3) 73-95
Kolobova, K. M. ‘Pharnaces I of Pontus’ (Russ.), VDI 1949.3 (29)
27-35

Leskov, A. M. Gorny Krim v Pyervom Tysyacheletii do n. E. (Mountain
Crimea in the first Millennium a.c.). Kiev, 1965

Levi, E. I. Of via-Gorod Epokhi Ellinizma (The City of Olbia in the Age of
Hellenism). Leningrad, 1985

Lintott, A. W. ‘Mithridatica’, Historia 25 (1976) 489-91

Lomouri, N. Y. K Istorii Pontiiskogo Tsarstva (On the History of the Pontic
Kingdom). Tbilisi, 1979

McGing, B.C. ‘Appian, Manius Aquillius and Phrygia’, GRBS 21 (1980)
3542

McGing, B. C. ‘The date of the outbreak of the third Mithridatic war’,
Phoenix 38 (1984) 12-18

McGing, B. C. ‘The kings of Pontus: some problems of identity and
date’, RAM 129 (1986) 248-59

McGing, B. C. The Foreign Policy of Mithridates Eupator, King of Pontus.
Leiden, 1986

Marshall, A. J. ‘Pompey’s organisation of Bithynia-Pontus: two
neglected texts’, JRS 58 (1968) 103-7

Maximova, M. I. Antichnye Goroda Yugo-Vostochnogo Prichernomorya
(Ancient Cities of the South-East Black Sea). Moscow and Leningrad, 1956
Meyer, E. Geschichte des Kénigreichs Pontos. Berlin, 1878

Minns, E. H. Scythians and Greeks in South Russia. Cambridge, 1913
Molyev, E. A. ‘The establishment of the power of Mithridates Eupator
on the Bosporus’ (Russ.), AMA 2 (1974) 60-72

Molyev, E. A. Mitridat Eupator. Saratov, 1976

Molyev, E. A. ‘Armenia Minor and Mithridates Eupator’ (Russ.),
Problemy Antichnoi Istorii i Kultury 1, Yerevan, 1979, 185-9

Molyev, E. A. ‘On the question of the origin of the Pontic Mithridatids’
(Russ.), VDI 1983.4, 131-8

Molyev, E. A. ‘Mithridates Ktistes, ruler of Pontus’ (Russ.), Tskhaltubo
Il, 581-8

MGll, A. ‘Der Uberseehandel von Pontos’, Adéen 1. hist.—geogr. Kollogu.
Stuttgart, 8-9 Dec. 1980, Geographia Historica (1984)

Munro, J. A. ‘Roads in Pontus, royal and Roman’, JHS 21 (1901) 52-66
Neverov, O. Y. ‘Mithridates as Dionysus’ (Russ.), SGE 37 (1973) 41-5
Neverov, O. Y. ‘Mithridates and Alexander, on the iconography of
Mithridates VI’ (Russ.) SA 1971.2, 86-95

Niese, B. ‘Die Erwerbung der Kiisten des Pontos durch Mithridates VI’
(Straboniana 6), RAM 42 (1887) 559-74

49.
50.

55-
57:
58.
59:
Go.
61.

62.

63.

64.
65.
66.

67.

68.
69.

7O.

MITHRIDATICA 837

Olshausen, E. ‘Mithridates VI und Rom’, ANRW 1.1 (1972) 806-15
Olshausen, E. ‘Zum Hellenisierungsprozess am pontischen K6énigshof’,
AneSoe § (1974) 15 3-64

Olshausen, E. and Biller, ]. Héstorisch-geographische Aspekte der Geschichte
des pontischen und armenischen Reiches 1. Wiesbaden, 1984

Ormerod, H. A. ‘Mithridatic advance in Asia Minor and Greece’, CAH
1X (1932) 238-Go

Perl, G. ‘The eras of the Bithynian, Pontic and Bosporan kingdoms’
(Russ.), VDI 1969.3 (109) 39-69 (= ‘Zur Chronologie der Kénigreiche
Bithynia, Pontos und Bosporos’, Studien zur Geschichte und Philosophie des
Altertums, ed. J. Harmatta, Amsterdam 1968, 299-330)

Raditsa, L. ‘Mithridates’ view of the Peace of Dardanus in Sallust’s Letter
of Mithridates’, Helikon 9-10 (1969-70) 632-5

Reinach, T. Méthridate Eupator, roi du Pont. Paris, 1890

Robinson, D. M. Ancient Sinope. Baltimore, 1906

Rostovtzeff, M. I. ‘Mithradates of Pontus and Olbia’ (Russ.), Igvestia
Arkheologicheskoi Kommissii Rossii 23 (1907) 21-7

Rostovtzeff, M. I. ‘Pontus, Bithynia and the Bosporus’, ABSA 22
(1916-18) 1~22

Rostovtzeff, M. I. Iranians and Greeks in South Russia. Oxford, 1922
Rostovtzeff, M. I. Seythien und der Bospor. Berlin, 1931

Rostovtzeff, M. I. ‘Pontus and its neighbours: the first Mithridatic War’,
CAH 1x (1932) 211-38

Salomone Gaggero, E. ‘La propaganda antiromana di Mitridate VI
Eupatore in Asia minore e in Grecia’, Contributi di storia antica in onore di
Albino Gargetti, Genoa, 1977, 89-123

Salomone Gaggero, E. ‘Relations politiques et militaires de Mithridate
VI Eupator avec les populations et les cités de Thrace et avec les colonies
grecques de la Mer Noire occidentale’, Pulpudeva, semaines
philippopolitaines de l'histoire et de la culture thrace, Plovdiv 4-19 oct. 1976 11,
ed. A. Fol, Sofia, 1978, 294-305

Saprykin, S. Y. ‘Heraclea, Chersonesus and Pharnaces I of Pontus’
(Russ.), VDI 1979.3 (149) 43-59

Sarikakis, T. C. ‘Les vépres ephésiennes de l’an 88 av. J.-C.’, EThess 15
(1976) 25 3-64

Savelya, O. ‘On the relations between Greeks and barbarians in the
south-western Crimea’ (Russ.), Ts&haltubo 1, 166-76

Schultz, P. M. ‘Late Scythian culture and its variants on the Dnieper and
in the Crimea’ (Russ.), Problemy Skiphskoi Arkheologti (Problems of Scythian
Archaeology), Moscow, 1971, 127-36

Sheglov, A. N. ‘The Tauri and the Greek colonies in Taurica’ (Russ.)
Tskhaltubo 11, 204-18

Shelov, D. B. ‘Tyras and Mithridates Eupator’ (Russ.), VDI 1962.2 (80)
95-102

Shelov, D. B. ‘Concerning the ancient literary tradition of the
Mithridatic wars (Posidonius and Cicero)’ (Russ.), Istoria i Kultura
antichnogo Mira, Moscow, 1977, 197-201

838

JIA.

71B.

73-

74.

76.

77-

77A-

7B.
78.

78A.

79:
80,

81.
82.

83.
85.

86.

88.

89.

go.

D. THE EAST

Shelov, D. B. ‘Colchis in the system of the Pontic empire of Mithridates
VY’ (Russ.), VDI 1980.3 (153) 28-43

Shelov, D. B. ‘Le royaume pontique de Mitridate Eupator’, Journal des
Savants 1982, 3-4, 243-66

Shelov, D. B. ‘The cities of the north Black Sea area and Mithridates
Eupator’ (Russ.), VDI 1983.2, 41-52

Shelov, D. B. ‘The Pontic state of Mithridates Eupator’ (Russ.),
Tskhaltubo 111, 551-72

Shelov, D. B. ‘The ancient idea of a unified Pontic state’ (Russ.), VDI
1986.1 (176) 36-42

Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘Rome, Pamphylia and Cilicia’, /R.S 66 (1976) 1-9
Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘The Roman involvement in Anatolia 167-88
B.c.’, JRS 67 (1977) 62-75

Sherwin- White, A. N. ‘Ariobarzanes, Mithridates and Sulla’, CQ 27
(1977) 173-83

Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘The opening of the Mithridatic war’, ®tAtas
Xdpw, Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni, ed. M. J.
Fontana, M. T. Piraino and F. P. Rizzo, v1, Rome, 1980, 1979-95
Solomonnik, E. I. ‘On the Scythian state and its relations with the North
Black Sea Region’, Arkheologia i Istoria Bospora 1 (Russ.), ed.
Gaidukevich, V. F., 1952, 103-29

Todua, T. Kolkhida v Sostavye Pontiiskogo Tsarstva. Tbilisi, 1990
Vinogradov, Y. G. ‘Discussion on chronology of Mithridates’ early
career, 120-111 B.C.’ (Russ.), Tshbaltubo 11, 624-5

Vinogradov, Y. G. Politicheskaya Istoria Ol viiskogo Polisa VII-I Vyekov
do n.E. Moscow, 1989

Vitucci, G. I/ regno di Bitinia. Rome, 1953

Vysotskaya, T. Pogdniye Skiphy v Yugozapadnom Krimu (Late Scyths in the
South-West Crimea). Kiev, 1972

Vysotskaya, T. S&iphskiye Gorodischa (Scythian Sites). Simferopol, 1975
Weimert, H. Wirtschaft als landschaftsgebundenes Phdnomen: die antike
Landschaft Pontos’. Eine Fallstudie. Frankfurt, 1984

Widengren, G. ‘La légende royale de I’Iran antique’, Hommages a Georges
Dumézil (Coll. Latomus 45), Brussels, 1960, 230-1

Wilhelm, A. ‘Konig Mithridates Eupator und Olbia’, K/io 29 (1933) 50-9
Winfield, D. ‘The northern routes across Anatolia’, AS 27 (1977) 15 1-66
Winter, F. ‘Mithridates VI Eupator’, J/D-AI 9 (1894) 245-54

b. THE JEWS

Abel, F. M. Les livres des Maccabées. Paris, 1949

Abel, F. M. Histoire de la Palestine depuis la conquéte d’ Alexandre jusqu'a
invasion arabe i. Paris, 1952

Alon, G. ‘Did the Jewish people and its sages cause the Hasmoneans to
be forgotten?’, Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple and
Talmud, trans\. by I. Abrahams, Jerusalem, 1977, 1-17

Ariel, D. T. ‘A survey of coin finds in Jerusalem’, Liber Annuus, Studium

gl.
92.

93-
94-

95-

96.
97:

98.
99-

100.
IOI.

102.
103.

104.
105.
106.

107.
108.

109.
110.
ILI.
112.
113.
114.
115.

116.
117.
118.

119.
120.

THE JEWS 839

Biblicum Franciscanum 32 (1982) 273-307

Avigad, N. ‘The rock-carved facades of the Jerusalem Necropolis’, JEJ1
(1950-1) 96-106

Avigad, N. ‘A bulla of Jonathan the High Priest’, JEJ 25 (1975) 8-12,
and ‘A bulla of King Jonathan’, ibid. 245-6

Avigad, N. Discovering Jerusalem. Oxford, 1984

Bar-Adon, P. ‘Another settlement of the Judaean desert sect at ‘En el-
Ghuweir on the shores of the Dead Sea’, BASO 277 (1977) 1-22
Barag, D. and Qedar, Sh. ‘The beginning of Hasmonean coinage’, Israe/
Numismatic Journal 4 (1980) 8-21

Bartlett, J. Jericho. London, 1982

Beall, T. S. Josephus’ Description of the Essenes Illustrated by the Dead Sea
Scrolls (S NTS Monogr. ser. 58). Cambridge, 1988

Benoit, P. ‘L’inscription grecque du tombeau de Jason’, JEJ 17 (1967)
112-13

Bickerman, E. From Egra to the Last of the Maccabees. New York, 1962
Bickerman, E. The Jews in the Greek Age. Cambridge, MA, 1988
Bowsher, J. M. C. ‘Architecture and religion in the Decapolis’, Pa/EQ
Jan.—June 1987, 62-9

Burr, V. ‘Rom und Judaa im 1. Jahrhundert’, ANRW 1.1 (1972) 875-86
Charlesworth, J. H. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapba. 2 vols. London,
1985

Collins, J. J. ‘The epic of Theodotus and the Hellenism of the
Hasmoneans’, HTAR 73 (1980) 91-104

Collins, J. J. Between Athens and Jerusalem. Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic
Diaspora. New York, 1983

Cross, F. M. The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies.
Revd. New York, 1961

Davies, P. R. ‘Hasidim in the Maccabean period’, JJS¢ 28 (1977) 127-40
Davies, P. R. ‘The ideology of the Temple in the Damascus document’,
JJSt 33 (1982) 287-302

Davies, P. R. Qumran. Guildford, 1982

Delcor, M. ‘Le temple d’Onias en Egypte’, RBi 75 (1968) 188-205

De Vaux, R. Ancient Israel, its Life and Institutions. 2nd edn, London, 1965
De Vaux, R. Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Revd. Oxford, 1973
Dever, W. G. Gezer IV. The 1969-71 Seasons. Jerusalem, 1986

Efron, J. Studies on the Hasmonean Period. Leiden, 1987

Egger, R. Josephus und die Samaritaner (Novum Test. et Orbis Antiquus
4). Gottingen, 1986

Foerster, G. ‘Architectural fragments from Jason’s tomb reconsidered’,
TEJ 28 (1978) 152-6

Gafni, I. ‘Josephus and I Maccabees’, in Josephus, the Bible and History, ed.
L. H. Feldman and G. Hata, Detroit, 1989, 147-72

Giovannini, A. and Miller, H. ‘Die Beziehungen zwischen Rom und den
Juden im 2. Jh. v. Chr.’, MH 28 (1971) 156-71

Goldstein, J. A. 1 Maccabees. New York, 1976

Goodman, M. The Ruling Class of Judaea. Cambridge, 1987

123,

124,

125.
126.

127.

128.

129.

130.

135.
136,
137.
138,
139.

140.
141.

142.

143.

144.

D. THE EAST

Habicht, Chr. 2 Makkabderbuch (Jidische Schriften aus hellenistisch—rémischer
Zeit 1:3). Giitersloh, 1976

Hayward, R. ‘The Jewish temple at Leontopolis: a reconsideration’, ]JS¢
33 (1982) 429-43

Hengel, M. Judaism and Hellenism, transl. by J. Bowden. 2 vols. Bandon
1974

Hengel, M., Charlesworth, J. H. and Mendels, D. ‘The polemical
character of “On Kingship” in the Temple Scroll: an attempt at dating
“11Q Temple’’’, J]S¢ 37 (1986) 18-38

Kasher, A. ‘Gaza during the Greco-Roman era’, Jerusalem Cathedra 2
(1982) 63-78

Kasher, A. Jews, Idumaeans and ancient Arabs (Texte und Studien zum
antiken Judentum 18). Tiibingen, 1988

Knibb, M. A. The Qumran Community. Cambridge, 1987

Lane, E. N. ‘Sabazius and the Jews in Valerius Maximus: a re-
examination’, J/RS 69 (1979) 34-8

Laperrousaz, E.-M. Qumran. L'établissement essénien des bords de la Mer
Morte. Histoire et archéologie du site. Paris, 1976

Levine, L. I. ‘The Hasmonean conquest of Strato’s Tower’, [EJ 24
(1974) 62-9

Lichtenstein, H. ‘Die Fastenrolle. Eine Untersuchung zur jidisch-
hellenistischen Geschichte’, HebrUC A 8-9 (1931-2) 257-351

Lohse, E. Die Texte aus Qumran hebraisch und deutsch. 2nd edn, Munich,
1971

Macalister, R. A. S. The Excavation of Gezer, 1902-1905 and 1907-1909 1.
London, 1911

Mendels. O. The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature
(Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 15). Tubingen, 1987
Meshorer, Y. Ancient Jewish Coinage. 2 vols. New York, 1982
Momigliano, A. ‘The date of the first book of Maccabees’, Mé/. Heurgon
ul, 657-61 (= Sesto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico\1,
561-6).

Maa G. F. ‘Fate and free will in the Jewish philosophies according to
Josephus’, HTAR 22 (1929) 371-89

Netzer, E. ‘The Hasmonean and Herodian winter palaces at Jericho’,
IE] 25 (1975) 89-100

Neusner, J. “The fellowship (haburah) in the second Jewish
commonwealth’, HTAR 53 (1960) 125-42

Neusner, J. The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism. Leiden, 1973
Nickelsburg, G. W. E. Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah.
London, 1981

Puech, E. ‘Inscriptions funéraires palestiniennes: tombeau de Jason et
ossuaires’, R Bi 90 (1983) 481-5 33

Purvis, J. O. “The Samaritans and Judaism’, Early Judaism and its Modern
Interpreters, ed. R. A. Kraft and G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Philadelphia,
1986, 81-98

Qimron, E. and Strugnell. J. ‘An unpublished Halakhic letter from

145.
146.
147.
148.

149.
150.

Igt.
152.

153.

1§4.
155.
156.

157.

162.
163.

164.
165,

166.
167,

168,

THE JEWS 841

Qumran’, Biblical Archaeology Today, ed. J. Amitai (Proc. of the 1984
Internat. Congr. on Biblical Archaeology), Jerusalem, 1985, 400~7

Raban, A. ‘The city walls of Strato’s Tower’, BASO 268 (1987) 71-88
Rahmani, L. Y. ‘Jason’s tomb’, JE] 17 (1967) 61-100

Rajak, T. ‘Roman intervention in a Seleucid siege of Jerusalem?’, GRBS
22 (1981) 65-81

Rappaport, U. ‘La Judée et Rome pendant le régne d’ Alexandre Janée’,
RE] 127 (1968) 329-45

Rappaport, U. ‘Les Iduméens en Egypte’, RPA 43 (1977) 73-82
Rappaport, U. ‘The emergence of the Hasmonean coinage’, Association
for Jewish Studies Review 1 (1976) 171-86

Reich, R. and Geva, H. ‘Archaeological evidence of the Jewish
population of Hasmonean Gezer’, IE] 31 (1981) 48-52

Schalit, A., (ed.) The World History of the Jewish People. vi, The Hellenistic
Age. London, 1976

Schiirer, E. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Transl.
and rev. by G. Vermes, F. Millar, M. Goodman and M. Black. Vols. 1, 1,
Il.1, 11.2. Edinburgh, 1973-87

Seger, J. D. ‘The search for Maccabean Gezer’, Biblical Archaeologist 39
(1971) 142-4

Sievers, ]. “The role of women in the Hasmonean dynasty’, Josephus, the
Bible and History, ed. L. H. Feldman and G. Hata, Detroit, 1989, 132-46
Smallwood, E. M. The Jews under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian.
Leiden, 1976

Stern, E. ‘The excavations at Tel Dor’, The Land of Israel: Cross-Roads of
Civilization, ed. E. Lipinski, Louvain, 1985, 169-92

Stern, M. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. Jerusalem, 1974
Stern, M. ‘Judaea and her neighbours in the days of Alexander
Jannaeus’, Jerusalem Cathedra 1 (1981) 22-46

Stone, M. E. Scriptures, Sects and Visions. A Profile of Judaism from Ezra to
the Jewish Revolts. London, 1982

Stone, M. E. Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period (Compendia
Rerum Judaicarum ad Novum Testamentum 2.2). Assen and
Philadelphia, 1984

Tcherikover, V. Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews. Jerusalem, 1966
Tsafrir, Y. “The location of the Seleucid Akra at Jerusalem’, RBi 82
(1975) 501-21

Vermes, G. ‘The Essenes and history’, ]JS¢ 32 (1981) 18-31

Vermes, G. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective. 2nd edn, London,
1982

Vermes, G. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. 3rd edn, London, 1987
Vermes, G. and Goodman, M. D. The Essenes according to the Classical
Sources. Shefheld, 1987

Wacholder, B. Z. ‘Josephus and Nicolaus of Damascus’, Josephus, the
Bible and History, ed. L. H. Feldman and G. Hata, Detroit, 1989, 147-72

842

169A.
1698.

170.

172.

173.

175.

176.
177:

178.

179.

181.
182.
183.

184.

185.

186.

186A.

D. THE EAST

c. EGYPT

Badian, E. “The testament of Ptolemy Alexander’, RAM 110 (1967)
178-92

Bagnall, R. S. ‘Stolos the admiral’, Phoenix 26 (1972) 358-68

Bagnall, R. S. The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions outside Egypt
(Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 4). Leiden, 1976

Bingen, J. ‘Les epistratéges de Thébaide sous les derniers Ptolémées’,
CE 45 (1970) 369-78

Bingen, J. ‘Présence grecque en milieu rural ptolémaique’, Problémes de la
terre en Grece ancienne, ed. M. I. Finley, Paris, 1973, 215-22

Bingen, J. ‘Kerkéosiris et ses Grecs au IT* siécle avant notre ére’, Actes du
XV" congrés internat. de papyrologie 1v (Papyrologica Bruxellensia 19),
Brussels, 1978, 87-94

Bingen, J. ‘Les cavaliers catoeques de |’Heracléopolite au I* siécle’, Studia
Hellenistica 27 (1983) 1-11

Bingen, J. ‘Les tensions structurelles de la société ptolémaique’, Atti de/
XVII congresso internaz. di papirologia 111, Naples, 1984, 921-37
Bloedow, E. Beitrage zur Geschichte des Ptolematos xu. Diss. Wiirzburg,
1963

Bonnde H. Reallexikon der dgyptischen Religionsgeschichte. Berlin, 1952
Boswinkel, E. and Pestman, P. W. Les archives privées de Dionysios, fils de
Kephalas (Pap LugdBat. 22). Leiden, 1982

Cauville, S. and Devauchelle, D. ‘Le temple d’Edfou: étapes de la
construction; nouvelles données historiques’, R Egypt 35 (1984) 31-55
Clarysse, W. ‘Greeks and Egyptians in the Ptolemaic army and
administration’, Aegyptus 65 (1985) 57-66

Cleopatra's Egypt. Age of the Ptolemies, ed. R. S. Bianchi ef a/. Brooklyn
Museum, New York, 1988

Crawford, D. J. Kerkeosiris: an Egyptian Village in the Ptolemaic Period.
Cambridge, 1971

Crawford, D. J., Quaegebeur, J. and Clarysse, W. Studies on Ptolemaic
Memphis (Studia Hellenistica 24). Louvain, 1980

van ’t Dack, E. ‘La date de C.Ord.Pfol. 80-83 = BGU VI 1212 et le séjour
de Cléopatre VII 4 Rome’, AneSoc 1 (1970) 53-67

van ’t Dack, E. Reizen, expedities en emigratie uit Italié naar Ptolemaeisch
Egypte (Meded. koninkl. Acad. Wetensch., Lett. en schone Kunsten, Kl. der
Letteren 42,4). Brussels, 1980

van ’t Dack, E. “‘L’armée romaine d’Egypte de 55 4 30 av.J.-C.’, Das
romisch-byzantinische Agypten. Akten des internat. Symposions 26-30 Sept.
1978 in Trier, Mainz, 1983, 19-29

van ’t Dack, E. ‘Les relations entre l’Egypte ptolémaique et I’ Italie, un
apercu des personnages revenant ou venant d’Alexandrie ou d’Egypte en
Italie’, Egypt and the Hellenistic World. Proc. of the Internat. Colloquium
Louvain 24-6 May 1982 (Studia Hellenistica 27), Louvain, 1983, 383-406
van ’t Dack E. Ptolemaica Selecta. Etudes sur l'armée et ! administration lagides
(Studia Hellenistica 29) Louvain, 1988

187.
188.

189.

190.
191,

192.
193.

194.

195.
196.

197.

198.

199.
200.

201,

202.
203,
204.
205.
206.
207.

208.

209.

EGYPT 843

Derchain, P. ‘Miettes’, R Egypt 26 (1974) 7-20

Donadoni, S. ‘Una testata di decreto Tolemaico’, Alessandria e il mondo
ellenistico-romano. Studi in onore di Achille Adriani, ed. N. Bonacasa and A.
Di Vita (Studi e Materiali Ist. arch. Univ. Palermo 4-6) 1, Rome, 1983,
162-4

Dunand, F. ‘Droit d’asile et refuge dans les temples en Egypte lagide’,
Hommages a la mémoire de Serge Sauneron 1, ed. J. Vercoutter, Cairo, 1979,
77-97

Fraser, P. M. ‘Inscriptions from Ptolemaic Egypt’, Berytus 13 (1959-Go)
123-61

Fraser, P. M. ‘A prostagma of Ptolemy Auletes from Lake Edku’, JEA 56
(1970) 179-82

Fraser, P. M. Ptolemaic Alexandria. 4 vols. Oxford, 1972

Gara, A. ‘Limiti strutturali dell’economia monetaria nell’Egitto tardo-
tolemaico’, Studi Ellenistici 1, ed. B. Virgilio, Pisa, 1984, 107-34
Heinen, H. Rom und Aegypten von 51 bis 47 v.Chr. Diss. Tabingen, 1966
Heinen, H. ‘Casar und Kaisarion’, Historia 18 (1969) 181-203

Heinen, H. ‘Die Tryphé des Ptolemaios VIII Euergetes II’, A/thistorische
Studien Hermann Bengtson zum 70. Geburtstag dargebracht von Kollegen und
Schiilern, ed. H. Heinen (Historia Einzelschriften 40), Wiesbaden, 1983,
116-30

Johnson, J. H. ‘Is the Demotic Chronicle an anti-Greek tract?’
Grammatika Demotika. Festschrift fir Erich Liddeckens zum 15. Juni 1983,
ed. H.-J. Thissen and K.-T. Zauzich, Wiirzburg, 1984, 107-24
Kaplony-Heckel, U. ‘Ein neuer demotischer Brief aus Gebelen’, Festschr.
zum 150-jabrigen Bestehen des Berliner agyptischen Museums (Staatl. Museen zu
Berlin, Mitt. aus d. agyptischen Sammlung 8), Berlin, 1974, 287-301
Koenen, L. ‘OEOIZIN EX @POZ. Ein einheimischer Gegenkénig in
Agypten (132/1*)’, CE 34 (1959) 103-19

Koenen, L. ‘Die Propheziehungen des “Topfers”’, ZPE 2 (1968)
178-209

Koenen, L. ‘The prophecies of a potter: a prophecy of world renewal
becomes an apocalypse’, Proc. of the XIIth Int. Congress of Papyrology, Ann
Arbor, 13-17 August, 1968 (Am. Stud. Pap. 7), Toronto, 1970, 249-54
Koenen, L. ‘Bemerkungen zum Text des Topferorakels und zu dem
Akaziensymbol’, ZPE 13 (1974) 313-19

Kyrieleis, H. Bildnisse der Ptolemder (Deutsches arch. Institut, Arch.
Forschungen 2). Berlin, 1975

Lewis, N. ‘Dryton’s wives: two or three?, CE 57 (1982) 317-21

Lewis, N. Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt. Oxford, 1986

Lloyd, A. B. ‘Nationalist propaganda in Prolemaic Egypt’, Historia 31
(1982) 33-55

Lord, L. E. ‘The date of Julius Caesar’s departure from Egypt’, Classical
Studies presented to F. Capps on his 70th Birthday, Princeton, 1936, 223-32
Liddeckens, FE. Agyptische Ehevertrége (Agyptologische Abhandlungen
1) Wiesbaden, 1960

Maehler, H. ‘Egypt under the last Prolemies’, BICS 30 (1983) 1-16.

844

210,
211.

212,

213.

214.
215.
216.

217.

218.

219.

221.

223.

224.
225.

226,

227.

228.

229.

230,

231.

232,

D. THE EAST

Meeks, D. Le grand texte des donations au temple d’ Edfou. Cairo, 1972

De Meulenaere, H. ‘Les stratéges indigénes du nome tentyrite 4 la fin de
Epoque ptolémaique et au début de l’occupation romaine’, RSO 34
(1959) 1-25

De Meulenaere, H. ‘Prosopographica Ptolemaica: le régne conjoint de
Prolémée XII Auléte et de Cléopatre VII’, CE 42 (1967) 300-5

Mond, R. and Myers, O. H. The Bucheum. 3 vols. London, 1934

Musti, D. ‘I successori di Tolemeo Evergete II’, PP 15 (1960) 432-46
Olshausen, E. Rom und Agypten von 116 bis sr v.Chr. Diss. Erlangen, 1963
Otto, W. and Bengtson, H. Zur Geschichte des Niederganges des
Ptolemderreiches. Ein Beitrag zur Regierungszeit des 8. und des 9. Ptolemders
(ABAW 17). Munich, 1938

Peremans, W. ‘Les révolutions égyptiennes sous les Lagides’, Das
ptolemaische Agypten. Akten des internat. Symposions 27-29 September 1976 in
Berlin, Mainz, 1978, 39-50

Pestman, P. W. ‘Les archives privées de Pathyris a ]’€poque ptolémaique.
La famille de Peteharsemtheus, fils de Panebkhounis’, PapLugdBat. 14
(1965) 47-105

Pestman, P. W. Chronologie égyptienne d’aprés les textes démotiques 332 av. J.-
C.-453 ap. J.-C. (Pap. Lugd. Bat. 15). Leiden, 1967

Pestman, P. W. Textes grecs, démotiques et bilingues. (Pap.Lugd.Bat. 19).
Leiden, 1978

Porter, B. and Moss, R. L. B. Topographical Bibliography of Ancient
Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings. Oxford, 1927- . 2nd
edn, with E. W. Burney and J. Malek, 1960—

Préaux, C. ‘Esquisse d’une histoire des révolutions égyptiennes sous les
Lagides’, CE 22 (1936) 522-52

Préaux, C. ‘La signification de l’€poque d’Evergéte II’, Actes du V« congrés
internat. de papyrologie, Oxford 30 aoit — 3 septembre 1937, Brussels, 1938,
345-54

Préaux, C. L’économie royale des Lagides. Brussels, 1939

Quaegebeur, J. ‘The genealogy of the Memphite high priest family in the
Hellenistic period’, Studia Hellenistica 24 (1980) 43-82

Reekmans, T. ‘The Ptolemaic copper inflation’, Studia Hellenistica 7
(1951) 61-118

Reymond, E. A. E. From the Records of a Priestly Family from Memphis \
(Agyptologische Abhandlungen 38). Wiesbaden, 1981

Roccati, A. ‘Nuove epigrafi greche e latine da File’, Hommages a M. J.
Vermaseren, ed. M. B. Boer and T. A. Edridge, 111, Leiden, 1978, 988-96
Samuel, A. E. Ptolemaic Chronology (MéinchBeitrPapyr 43). Munich, 1962
Samuel, A. E. ‘Year 27 = 30 and 88 B.c.’,.CE 40 (1965) 376-400
Shatzman, I. ‘The Egyptian question in Roman politics (59-54 B.c.)’,
Latomus 30 (1971) 363-9

Shore, A. F. ‘Votive objects from Dendera in the Graeco-Roman
period’, Orbis Aegyptiorum Speculum. Glimpses of Ancient Egypt. Studies in
Honour of H. W. Fairman, ed. J. Ruffle, G. A. Gaballa and K. A. Kitchen,
Warminster, 1979, 138-60

233.
234.
235.
236.
237.
238.
239.
240.
241.
242.
243.
244.
245.

246.

247.

248.

249.

250.
2gl.
252.

253.
254.

255.

OTHER EASTERN MATTERS 845

Skeat, T. C. The Reigns of the Ptolemies (MinchBeitrPapyr 39). Munich,
1934

Tait, W. J. Papyri from Tebtunis in Egyptian and in Greek. London, 1977
Tarn, W. W. ‘The Bucheum stelae: a note’, JRS 26 (1936) 187-9
Thissen, H. J. ‘Zur Familie des Strategen Monkores’, ZPE 27 (1977)
181-91

Thomas, J. D. The Epistrategos in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. ux. The
Ptolemaic Epistrategos (PapColon 6). Opladen, 1975

Thompson (Crawford) D. J. ‘Nile grain transport under the Prolemies’,
Trade 64-75 and 190-2

Thompson (Crawford) D. J. ‘The Idumaeans of Memphis and the
Prolemaic politeumata’, Atti del XVII congresso internaz. di papirologia,
Naples, 1984, 1069-75

Thompson, D. J. Memphis under the Ptolemies. Princeton, 1988
Traunecker, C. ‘Essai sur histoire de la XX1X° dynastie’, BLAO 79
(1979) 395-436

Volkmann, H. ‘Ptolemaios’ (24-37), RE 23.2 (1959) 1702-61
Walbank, F. W. ‘Egypt in Polybius’, Orbis Alegyptiorum Speculum.
Glimpses of Ancient Egypt. Studies in Honour of H. W. Fairman, ed. J.
Ruffle, G. A. Gaballa and K. A. Kitchen, Warminster, 1979, 180-9
Winkler, H. Rom und Aegypten im 2. Jahrhundert v.Chr. Diss. Leipzig, 1983
Winnicki, J. K. ‘Ein ptolemaischer Offizier in Thebais’, Eos 60 (1972)
343-53

Winter, E. ‘Der Herrscherkult in den agyptischen Ptolemaertempeln’,
Das ptolemaische Agypten. Akten des internat. Symposions 27-29 September
1976 in Berlin, Mainz, 1978, 147~60

de Wit, C. ‘Inscriptions dédicatoires du temple d’Edfou’, CE 36 (1961)
56-97, 277-320

Yoyotte, J. ‘Bakhthis: religion égyptienne et culture grecque 4 Edfou’,
Religions en Egypte hellénistique et romaine. Colloque de Strasbourg 16-18 mai
1967, Paris, 1969, 127-41

Zauzich, K.-T. ‘Zwei ibersehene Erwahnungen historischer Ereignisse
der Ptolemaerzeit in demotischen Urkunden’, Enchoria 7 (1977) 193

d. OTHER EASTERN MATTERS

Accame, S. I/ dominio romano in Grecia dalla guerra acaica ad Augusto. Rome,
1946

Bellinger, A. R. The End of the Seleucids. Trans. Connecticut Acad. 38,
1949

Bivar, A. D. H. ‘The political history of Iran under the Arsacids’,
Cambridge History of Iran 111.1. Cambridge, 1983, 21-99

Bowersock, G. Augustus and the Greek World. Oxford, 1965

Brunt, P. A. ‘Sulla and the Asian Publicans’, Latomus 15 (1956) 17-25
(=A 20, 1-8)

Burstein, S. M. Outpost of Hellenism: The Emergence of Heraclea on the Black
Sea. Berkeley, 1976

846

256.

258.
259.
260.
261.
262.
263.
264.
265.

266.
267.

268.
269.

270.
271.

272.

273.

274.

275.
276.

277.

278.

279.
280,

282.

283.

D. THE EAST

Burstein, S. M. ‘The aftermath of the Peace of Apamea: Rome and the
Pontic War’, AJAH 5 (1980) 1-11

Calder, W. M. and Bean, G. E. A Classical Map of Asia Minor. London,
1958

Candiloro, E. ‘Politica e cultura in Atene da Pidna alla guerra
mitridatica’, SCO 14 (1965) 134-76

Debevoise, N. C. A Political History of Parthia. Chicago, 1938, repr. 1968
Delo e f'Italia. See Abbreviations

Dilleman, J. ‘Les premiers rapports des Romains avec les Parthes’,
ArchOrient 3 (1931) 215-56

Dillemann, L. Haute Mésopotamie orientale et pays adjacents (Inst. fr. d’arch.
de Beyrouth, Bibl. arch. et hist. 72). Paris, 1962

Dobbins, K. W. ‘The successors of Mithridates II of Parthia’, NC 15
(1975) 19-45

Downey, G. ‘The occupation of Syria by the Romans’, TAPAA 82
(1951) 149-63

Drew-Bear, T. ‘Deux décrets hellénistiques d’Asie Mineure’, BCH 96
(1972) 443-71

Ferguson, W. S. Hellenistic Athens. London, 1911

Fraser, P. M. and Bean, G. E. The Rhodian Peraea and Islands. Oxford,
1954

Grousset, R. Histoire de’ Arménie des origines a 1071. Paris, 1947
Habicht, C. ‘Uber die Kriege zwischen Pergamon und Bithynien’,
Hermes 84 (1956) 90-110

Hatzfeld, J. Les trafiquants italiens dans l orient hellénique. Paris, 1919
Hoben, W. Untersuchungen zur Stellung kleinasiatischer Dynasten der
ausgehenden Republik. Mainz, 1969

Jones, A. H. M. The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces. Oxford, 1937
Jones, C. P. ‘Diodoros Pasparos and the Nikephoria of Pergamum’,
Chiron 4 (1974) 183-205

Jonkers, E. J. ‘Waren der Aufstand des Aristonicus und die
mithridatischen Kriege Klassenkampfe?’, ]V EG 18 (1964)

Levick, B. Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor. Oxford, 1967
Liebmann-Frankfort, T. La frontiére orientale dans la politique extérieure de
la République romaine. Brussels, 1968

Liebmann-Frankfort, T. ‘La provincia Cilicia et son intégration dans
lempire romain’, Hommages a M. Renard, ed. J. Bibauw (Coll. Latomus
102) 11, Brussels, 1969, 447-57

Lynch, H. F. B. Armenia, Travels and Studies. 2 vols. London, 1901
Malitz, J. “Caesars Partherkrieg’, Historia 33 (1984) 21-59
Manandrian, H. A. The Trade and Cities of Armenia in Relation to the
Ancient World Trade. Lisbon, 1965

Mancinetti Santamaria, G. ‘Filostrato di Ascalone, banchiere in Delo’,
Delo e I’ Italia 78-89

Marshall, B. A. “The date of Q. Mucius Scaevola’s governorship of Asia’,
Athenaeum 54 (1976) 117-30

Mattingly, H. B. ‘M. Antonius, C. Verres and the sack of Delos by the
pirates’, Pidias Xdpiv, Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni,

284.

285.
286.
287.
288.
289.
290.
291.
292.
293.

294.

295.
296.
297.

298.
299.

300.

THE WEST 847

ed. M. J. Fontana, M. T. Piraino and F. P. Rizzo, 1v, Rome, 1979,
1491-$15

Mattingly, H. B. “Rome’s earliest relations with Byzantium, Heraclea
Pontica and Callatis’, Ancient Bulgaria 1, ed. A. Poulter, Nottingham,
1983, 239-52

Ormerod, H. A. ‘The distribution of Pompey’s forces in the campaign of
67 .c.’, Liverpool Ann. Arch. Anth. 10 (1923) 46-51

Raschke, M. G. ‘New studies in Roman commerce with the East’,
ANRYVW 11.9.2 (1978) 604-1361

Reynolds, J. ‘Cyrenaica, Pompey and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus
Marcellinus’, JRS 52 (1962) 97-103

Rizzo, F. Le fonti per Ja storia della conquista pompetana della Siria (Kokalos
Suppl. 2). Palermo, 1963

Robert, L. ‘Théophane de Mytiléne 4 Constantinople’, CR.AI (1969)
42-64

Seibert, J. Historische Beitrage zu den dynastischen Verbindungen in
hellenistischer Zeit. Wiesbaden, 1967

Sherwin-White, A. N. Roman Foreign Policy in the East. London, 1984
Sherwin-White, S. M. Ancient Cos. Géttingen, 1978

Solin, H. ‘Appunti sull’onomastica romana a Delo’, Delo e /'Italia,
101-17

Syme, R. ‘Observations on the province of Cilicia’, Anatolian Studies
presented to William Hepburn Buckler, ed. W. Calder and J. Keil,
Manchester, 1939, 299-32 (=A 119, I 120-48)

Warmington, E. H. Commerce between the Roman Empire and India.
Cambridge, 1928

Wellesley, K. ‘The extent of the territory added to the Roman empire by
Pompey’, RAM 96 (1953) 293-318

Wilson, D. R. The Historical Geography of Bithynia, Paphlagonia and Pontus
in the Greek and Roman Periods. Diss. Oxford, 1960

Wolski, J. ‘Iran und Rom’, ANRW 11.9.1 (1976) 191-214

Wolski, J. ‘L’Arménie dans la politique du haut-empire parthe’, 14 15
(1980) 252-67

Ziegler, K. H. Die Beziehungen zwischen Rom und dem Partherreich.
Wiesbaden, 1984

E. THE WEST

Birot, P. and Gabert, P. La péninsule ibérique et I’ Italie. Paris, 1964
Broughton, T. R. S. The Romanisation of Africa Proconsularis. Baltimore,
1929

Chevallier, R. ‘Essai de chronologie des centuriations romaines de
Tunisie’, MEFRA 70 (1958) 61-128

Chevallier, R. La romanisation de la celtique du Pé. 1. Les données
Leographiques. Géographie, archéologie et histoire en Cisalpine. Paris, 1980
Chevallier, R. La romanisation de la celtique du P6. Essai d'histoire provinciale
(BEF AR 249). Rome, 1983

Clemente, G. I romani nella Gallia meridionale. Bologna, 1974

848

Il.
12.

13.

14.

15.

18.
19.

20.
21.

2A,
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

E. THE WEST

Corsaro, M. ‘La presenza romana a Entella: una nota su Tiberio Claudio
di Anzio’, ASNP 12 (1982) 917-44

Dilke, O. A. W. ‘Divided loyalties in eastern Sicily under Verres’,
Ciceroniana 4 (1980) 43-51

Domergue, C. Les mines de la péninsule ibérique a l’époque romaine. Thése
Paris, 1977

Domergue, C. La mine antique d’ Aljustrel (Portugal) et les tables de bronze de
Vipasca. Paris, 1983

Ebel, C. Transalpine Gaul. The Emergence of a Roman Province. Leiden, 1976
Ewins, U. ‘The enfranchisement of Cisalpine Gaul’, PBSR 23 (1955)
73-98

Gabba, E. ‘Sui senati delle citta siciliane nell’eta’ di Verre’, Athenaeum 47
(1959) 304-20

Gabba, E. ‘La Sicilia romana’, L’impero romano e le strutture economiche e
sociali delle provincie (Bibl. di Athenaeum 4), ed. M. H. Crawford, Como,
1986, 71-86

Galsterer, H. Untersuchungen zum rimischen Stadtewesen auf der iberischen
Halbinsel. Berlin, 1971

Galsterer-Kroll, B. ‘Zum is Latii in den keltischen Provinzen des
Imperium Romanum’, Chiron 3 (1973) 277-306

Gonzalez, J. ‘Tabula Siarensis, fortunales Siarenses et municipia civium
Romanorum’, ZPE 55 (1984) 55-100

Grispo, R. ‘Della Mellaria a Calagurra’, NRS 36 (1952) 189-225
Hoyos, B. D. ‘Pliny the Elder’s titled Baetican towns: obscurities, errors
and origins’, Historia 28 (1979) 439-70

Keay, S. J. Roman Spain. London, 1988

Knapp, R. C. Aspects of the Roman Experience in Iberia, 206-100 B.C.
Valladolid, 1977

Pedley, J. G. Paestum. London, 1990

Piganiol, A., (ed.) Aftlas des centuriations romaines de Tunisie. Paris, 1954
Rice Holmes, T. Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul. 2nd edn, Oxford, 1911
Richardson, J. S. ‘The Spanish mines and the development of provincial
taxation in the second century B.c.’, JRS 66 (1976) 139-52
Richardson, J. S. Hiéspaniae. Spain and the Development of Roman
Imperialism, 218-82 B.c. Cambridge, 1986

Rivet, A. L. Gallia Narbonensis. Southern Gaul in Roman Times. London,
1988

Roldan Hervas, J. M. ‘Da Numancia a Sertorio: problemas de la
romanizacion de Hispania en la encrucijada de las guerras civiles’, Studien
gar antiken Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift Friedrich Vittinghoff, ed. W. Eck, H.
Galsterer and H. Wolff (Kolner hist. Abh. 28), Cologne, 1980, 157-78
Sancho Rocher, L. ‘Los conventus iuridici en la Hispania romana’,
Caesaraugusta 45—6 (1978) 171-94

Teutsch, L. Das Stadtewesen in Nordafrika in der Zeit von C. Gracchus bis zum
Tode des Kaisers Augustus. Berlin, 1962

Verbrugghe, G. P. ‘Sicily 210-70 B.c. Livy, Cicero and Diodorus’,
TAPAA 103 (1972) §35-59

31.

32.

—_

12.
13.
14.

15.
16.

17:
18,
19.
20.
21.

22.

23.

mv OND SOS

PUBLIC LAW AND CRIMINAL LAW 849

Verbrugghe, G. P. ‘Slave rebellion or Sicily in revolt?’, Kokalos 20 (1974)
46-60
Wightman, E. M. Gallia Belgica. London, 1985

F. THE LAW
a. PUBLIC LAW AND CRIMINAL LAW

Accame, S. ‘La legislazione romana intorno ai collegi nel 1. secolo a.C.’,
Bull. del Mus. dell Impero romano 1942, 134-48

Adcock, F. Roman Political Ideas and Practice. (Jerome Lectures, 6th
series). Michigan and Toronto, 1959

Alexander, M. C. ‘Praemia in the Quaestiones of the late Republic’, CP
80 (1985) 20-32

Alexander, M. C. ‘Repetition of prosecutions, and the scope of
prosecutions, in the standing courts of the late Republic’, CSCA 13
(1982) 141-66

Allison, J. E. and Cloud, J. D. ‘The Lex Iulia Maiestatis’, Latomus 21
(1962) 711-31

Astin, A. E. ‘The Lex Annalis before Sulla’, Latomus 16 (1957) 588-613
Astin, A. E. ‘Leges Aelia et Fufta’, Latonus 23 (1964) 421-45

Astin, A. E. ‘Censorship in the late Republic’, Historia 34 (1985) 175-90
Astin, A. E. ‘Cicero and the censorship’, CPA 80 (1985) 233-9

Astin, A. E. ‘Regimen morunr, [RS 78 (1988) 14-34

Ausbiittel, F. M. Untersuchungen zu den Vereinen im Westen des romischen
Reiches (Frankfurter althist. Studien 11). Kallmiinz, 1982

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. ‘The history of the extortion court at Rome, 123-70
B.C.’, PBSR 14 (1938) 98-114 (= Seager, Crisis, 132-50)

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. ‘Three Ciceronian problems. 1. Clodius’ “repeal” of
the Lex Aelia Fufia’, JRS 47 (1957) 15-17

Balsdon, J. P. V. D. ‘Auctoritas, dignitas, otium’, CQ 10 (1960) 43-50
Baltrusch, E. Regimen Morum (Vestigia 41). Munich, 1986

Bauman, R. A. The Crimen Maiestatis in the Roman Republic and Augustan
Principate. Johannesburg, 1967

Bauman, R. A. ‘II ‘“‘sovversivismo” di Emilio Lepido’ (in English),
Labeo 24 (1978) 60-74

Bauman, R. A. ‘La crisi del “diritto”’, La rivoluzione romana, 208-16
Behrends, O. Die rémische Geschworenenverfassung. Gottingen, 1970
Behrends, O. rev. of Watson, Law Making, ZSS 92 (1975) 297-308
Behrends, O. ‘Tiberius Gracchus und die Juristen seiner Zeit’, Das Profil
des Juristen in der europaischen Tradition, Symposium aus Antass des 70.
Geburtstages von Franz Wieacker, ed. K. Luig and D. Liebs, Ebelsbach,
1980, 25-121

Behrends, O. ‘Staatsrecht und Philosophie in der ausgehenden
Republik’, ZSS 100 (1983) 458-84

Berger, A. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (TAPbS 43.2).
Philadelphia, 1953

222

850

24.
25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

32.
33.

34-
3%

39.
40.

4l.
42.
43.

44.
45.

47-
48.

49.
50.

52.

F. THE LAW

Bleicken, J. Das Volkstribunat der Rlassischen Republik. Munich, 1955
Bleicken, J. ‘Kollisionen zwischen Sacrum und Publicum’, Hermes 85
(1957) 446-80

Bleicken, J. Staatliche Ordnung und Fretheit in der rémischen Republik
(Frankfurter althist. Studien 6). Frankfurt, 1972

Bleicken, J. ‘In provinciali solo dominium populi Romani est vel
Caesaris. Zur Kolonisationspolitik der ausgehenden Republik und
frihen Kaiserzeit’, Chiron 4 (1974) 359-414

Bleicken, J. Lex Publica. Gesety und Recht in der romischen Republik. Berlin
and New York, 1975

Bonnefond-Coudry, M. Le sénat de la république romaine de la guerre
d’ Hannibal a Auguste (Col. éc. fr. de Rome 273). Rome, 1989

Botsford, G. W. The Roman Assemblies from their Origin to the End of the
Republic. New York, 1909, repr, 1968

Brasiello, U. ‘Sulla ricostruzione dei crimini in diritto romano: cenni
sulla evoluzione dell’omicidio’, SDHI 42 (1976) 246-64

Burton, G. P. ‘Proconsuls, assizes, and the administration of justice
under the empire’, JRS 65 (1975) 92-106

Cancelli, F. ‘A proposito di tresviri capitales’, Studi in onore di P. de
Franeisci 111, Milan, 1956, 17-35

Du Chatiment. See Abbreviations

Classen, C. J. ‘Bemerkungen zu Ciceros Ausserungen tiber die Gesetze’,
RAM 122 (1979) 278-302

Cloud, J. D. ‘The primary purpose of the lex Cornelia de sicarlis’, ZSS 86
(1969) 258-86

Cloud, J. D. ‘Sulla and the praetorship’, LCM 13 (1988) 69-73
Cornell, T. J. ‘Some observations on the “‘crimen incesti”’, Le délit
religienx, 27~37

Crawford, M. H. ‘Foedus and sponsio’, PBSR 41 (1973) 1-7

Crifo, G. ‘Attivita normativa del senato in eta repubblicana’, BIDR 10
(1968) 31-121

Crook, J. A. Law and Life of Rome. London, 1967

Crook, J. A. ‘Lex Cornelia “de falsis”’, Athenaeum 65 (1987) 163-71
Dahlheim, W. Gewalt und Herrschaft: das provingiale Herrschaftssystem der
romischen Republik. Berlin and New York, 1977

Daube, D. Forms of Roman Legislation. Oxford, 1956

Le délit religieux. See Abbreviations

Eder, W. Das vorsullanische Repetundenverfabren, Berlin, 1969

Ewins, U. ‘Ne quis iudicio circumveniatur’, ]RS 50 (1960) 94-107
Fascione, L. ‘Aliquem indicio circumvenire e ob iudicandum pecuniam accipere’ ,
AG (1975) 29-52

Fascione, L. Crimen e quaestio ambitus nell’eta repubblicana. Milan, 1984
Ferenczy, E. ‘Die ““Grundgesetze” der romischen Republik’, Sein und
Werden im Recht, Festgabe fiir Ulrich von Liibtow zum 70. Geburtstag, ed.
W. G. Becker and L. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Berlin, 1970, 267-80
Ferrary, J.-L. ‘Cicéron et la loi judiciare de Cotta’, MEFRA 87 (1975)
321-48

Ferrary, J.-L. ‘La lex Antonia de Termessibus’, Athenaeum 73 (1985)

61.
62.

63.
64.
65.

66.
67.

68.

72:

73.
74.

75.
76.

77:

PUBLIC LAW AND CRIMINAL LAW 851

419-57
Fraccaro, P. ‘I “decem stipendia” e le “leges annales” repubblicane’,
Opuscula 11, Pavia, 1957, 207-34

Fraenkel, E., rev. of Beckmann, Zauberei und Recht in Roms Friibzeit,
Gnomon 1 (1925) 185-200

von Fritz, K. Schriften zur griechischen und rémischen Verfassungsgeschichte
und Ver fassungstheorie. Berlin, 1976

Fuks, A. and Geiger, J. ‘The “lex iudiciaria” of M. Livius Drusus’, Studs
in onore di Edoardo Volterra 1, Milan, 1971, 422-7

Gabba, E. ‘Osservazioni sulla legge giudiziaria di M. Livio Druso’, in
C 55, 369-82

Gabba, E. ‘M. Livius Drusus and Sulla’s reforms’, in Cc 55, 131-41
Galsterer, H. ‘Roman law in the provinces: some problems of
transmission’, L’impero romano, (see Abbreviations), 13-28

Galsterer, H. “La loi municipale des romains: chimére ou réalité?’, RD 65
(1987) 181-203

Gaudemet, J. Les gouvernants a Rome (Antiqua 31). Rome, 1985
Giovannini, A. Consulare Imperium (Schweizerische Beitr. zur
Altertumswiss. 16). Basle, 1983

Giovannini, A. ‘Volkstribunat und Volksgericht’, Chiron 13 (1983)
544-606

Gnoli, F. ‘Sulla paternita e sulla datazione della “lex Iulia peculatus’’,
SDHI 38 (1972) 328-38

Gnoli, F. ‘Cic. nat deor. 3.74 e origine della quaestio perpetua peculatus’,
RIL 109 (1975) 331-41

Gnoli, F. Ricerche sul crimen peculatus. Milan, 1979

Greenidge, A. H. J. Infamia. Its Place in Roman Public and Private Law.
Oxford, 1894, repr. Aalen, 1977

Greenidge, A. H. J. The Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time. London, 1901,
repr. New York, 1971

Grierson, P. ‘The Roman Jaw of counterfeiting’, Essays in Roman Coinage
Presented to Harold Mattingly, ed. R. A. G. Carson and C. H. V.
Sutherland, Oxford, 1956, 240-61

Grieve, L. }. ‘The reform of the comitia centuriata’, Historia 34 (1985)
278-309

Griffin, M. T. ‘The “‘leges iudiciariae” of the pre-Sullan era’, CO 23
(1973) 108-26

Guarino, A. ‘Senatus consultum ultimum’, Sein und Werden im Recht,
Festgabe fiir Ulrich von Libtow zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. W.G. Becker and L.
Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Berlin, 1970, 281-94

Guarino, A. Storia del diritto romano. 8th edn, Naples, 1990, ch. 2, ‘Tl
diritto romano preclassico’

Hall, U. ‘Voting procedure in Roman assemblies’, Historia 13 (1964)
267-306

Hands, A. R. ‘Livius Drusus and the courts’, Phoenix 26 (1972) 268-74
Harris, W. V. ‘Was Roman law imposed on the Italian allies?’, Historia 21
(1972) 639-45

Henderson, M. I. ‘The process de repetundis’, JRS 41 (1951) 71-88

852

78.

79:
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.

86.

92.

93-
94.

95-

96.
97:

99-
100.

101,
102.

103.

F. THE LAW

Homo, L. Les institutions politiques romaines. De la cité a état. Paris, 1927.
Transl. by M. R. Dobie as Roman Political Institutions, from City to State,
London and New York, 1929

Hoyos, B. D. ‘Lex provinciae and governor’s edict’, Antichthon 7 (1973)
47-33

Humbert, M. ‘Municipium’ et ‘civitas sine suffragio’. L’ organisation de la
conguéte jusqu’a la guerre sociale (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 36). Rome, 1978
Humbert, M. ‘Le tribunat de la plébe et le tribunal du peuple: remarques
sur histoire de la provocatio ad populum’, MEFRA 100 (1988) 431-503
Jashemski, W. F. The Origins and History of the Proconsular and
Propraetorian Imperium to 27 B.c. Chicago, 1950

Jameson, S. ‘Pompey’s imperium in 67: some constitutional fictions’,
Historia 19 (1970) 539-60

Jocelyn, H. D. ‘The poet Cn. Naevius, P. Cornelius Scipio and Q.
Caecilius Metellus’, Amtichthon 3 (1969) 32-47

Jolowicz, H. F. and Nicholas, B. Historical Introduction to the Study of
Roman Law. 3rd edn, Cambridge, 1972

Jones, A. H. M. ‘Civitates immunes et liberae’, Anatolian Studies presented
to William Hepburn Buckler, ed. W. Calder and J. Keil, Manchester, 1939,
103-18

Jones, A. H. M. Studies in Roman Government and Law. Oxford, 1960
Jones, A. H. M. ‘De legibus Iunia et Acilia repetundarum’, PCPAS 6
(1960) 39-42

Jones, A. H. M. The Criminal Courts of the Roman Republic and Principate.
Oxford, 1972

Kloft, H. Prorogation und ausserordentliche Imperien 326-81 v.Chr.
Untersuchungen zur Verfassung der rémischen Republik (Beitrage zur kl.
Philologie 84). Meisenheim, 1977

Kubitschek, J. W. Imperium Romanum tributim discriptum. Prague, 1889,
repr. Rome, 1972

Kunkel, W. Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung des rémischen Kriminalverfahrens
in vorsullanischer Zeit (SBAW 56). Munich, 1962

Kunkel, W. ‘Quaestio’, RE 24 (1963) 720-69 (=F 96, 33-110)
Kunkel, W. ‘Das Konsilium im Hausgericht’, ZSS 83 (1966) 219751(=F
96, 117~49)

Kunkel, W. An Introduction to Roman Legal and Constitutional History. 2nd
edn, transl. by J. M. Kelly, Oxford, 1973

Kunkel, W. Kéeine Schriften. Weimar, 1974

Lambertini, R. Plagium. Bologna, 1986

La Rosa, F. ‘Note sui tresviri capitales’, Labeo 3 (1957) 231-45

Levick, B. ‘Poena legis maiestatis’, Historta 28 (1979) 358-79
Linderski, J. ‘Constitutional aspects of the consular elections in 59 B.c.’,
Historia 14 (1965) 423-42

Linderski, J. ‘The augural law’, ANRW 11 16.3 (1986) 2146-312
Lintott, A. W. ‘Provocatio from the struggle of the orders to the
Principate’, ANRW 1.2 (1972) 226-67

Lintott, A. W. ‘The quaestiones de sicartis et veneficis and the Latin lex
Bantina’, Hermes 106 (1978) 125-38

104.

10§.

106.
107.
108,

109.
110,

lI.

113.

114,

I1§.

116.

117.

118,

119.
120,
121.
122.
123.

124.

125.

126.

127.
128,

129.
130.

PUBLIC LAW AND CRIMINAL LAW 853

Lintott, A. W. ‘The /eges de repetundis and associate measures under the
Republic’, ZSS 98 (1981) 162-212

Luraschi, G. Foedus Tus Latii Civitas, Aspetti costituzionali della
romanizzazione in Transpadana (Publ. Univ. Pavia, Studi scienz. giurid. e
soc. 29). Padua, 1979

MacCormack, G. ‘Criminal liability for fire in early and classical Roman
law’, Index 3 (1972) 382-96

Magdelain, A. La Joi a Rome. Histoire d’un concept. Paris, 1978

Marshall, A. J. “The structure of Cicero’s edict’, AJP 85 (1964) 185-91
Marshall, A. J. ‘Governors on the move’, Phoenix 20 (1966) 231-46
Marshall, A. J. “The lex Pompeia de provinciis (52 B.c.) and Cicero’s
imperium in 51-50 B.C. Constitutional aspects. ANRW 1.1 (1972) 887—

92!

Marshall, A. J. ‘The survival and development of international
jurisdiction in the Greek world’, ANRW 11.13 (1980) 626-61
Mattingly, H. B. ‘The extortion law of the Tabula Bembina’, J/RS 6o
(1970) 154-68

Mattingly, H. B. ‘The extortion law of Servilius Glaucia’, CQ 25 (1975)
255-63

Mattingly, H. B. ‘The character of the lex Acilia Glabrionis’, Hermes 107
(1979) 478-88

Mattingly, H. B. ‘A new look at the Lex repetundarum Bembina’,
Philologus 131 (1987) 71-81

Mellano, L. D. Sui rapporti tra governatore provinciale e giudici locali alla luce
delle Verrine. Milan, 1977

Miners, N. J. ‘The lex Sempronia ne quis iudicio circumveniatur’, CQ 8
(1958) 241-3
Mitchell, T. N. ‘Cicero and the senatus consultum ultimum’, Historia 20
(1971) 47-61

Mommsen, Th. Rémisches Strafrecht. Leipzig, 1899

Nardi, E. L’otre dei parricidi e le bestie incluse. Milan, 1980

Niccolini, G. I/ tribunato della plebe. Milan, 1932

Niccolini, G. I/ fasti dei tribuni della plebe. Milan, 1934

Nicholls, J. J. ‘The reform of the comitia centuriata, AJPh 77 (1956)
225-54

Nicolet, C. ‘Les lois judiciaires et les tribunaux de concussion’, ANRW
1.2 (1972) 197-214

Nippel, W. Mischverfassungstheorie und Verfassungsrealitat in Antike und
Frither Neuzeit (Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Bochumer hist. Studien
21). Stuttgart, 1980

O’Neal, W. J. ‘Composition of the juries de repetundis from the lex
Calpurnia to Sulla’, RSC 26 (1978) 359-62

Oost, S. I. “The date of the lex Iulia de repetundis’, A] PA 77 (1956) 19-28
Pieri, G. L’ histoire de cens jusqu'a la fin de la république romaine (Publ. de
Vinst. de droit romain de l’univ. de Paris 25). Paris, 1968

Quaderno 221. See Abbreviations

Richardson, J. S. “The purpose of the lex Calpurnia de repetundis’, /RS
77 (1987) 1-12

854

131.

132.
133.
134.
135.
136,

137.
138.

139.

140.
141.

142.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.

149.
150.

gt,
152.

153.
154.

156.

157.
158.

F. THE LAW

Rilinger, R. Der Einfluss des Wablleiters bei den rémischen Konsulwahlen von
366 bis so v.Chr. (Vestigia 24). Munich, 1976

Rod, B. Das senatus consultum ultimum und der Tod der Gracchen. Bonn, 1968
Rudolf, H. Die stadtische Organisation des altesten romischen Gebietes und die
Wirkung der casarischen Munizipalgesetegebung. Diss, Leipzig, 1932
Rudolph, H. Stadt und Staat im romischen Italien. Gottingen, 1985
Salerno, F. ‘Collegia adversus rem publicam?’ Index 13 (1985) 541-56
Santalucia, B. ‘La legislazione Sillana in materia di falso nummario’, Iura
30 (1979) 1-33

Santalucia, B. Diritto e processo penale nell’antica Roma. Milan, 1989
Saumagne, C. Le droit latin et les cités romaines sous ’ Empire. Essais critiques
(Pubs. de l’inst. de droit romain de l’Univ. de Paris 22). Paris, 1965
Scheid, J. ‘Le prétre et le magistrat. Réflexions sur les sacerdoces et le
droit public 4 la fin de la République’, Des Ordres, 243-80

Seager, R. ‘Lex Varia de maiestate’, Historia 16 (1967) 37-43
Sherwin-White, A. N. The Roman Citizenship. Oxford, 1939, repr. with
addenda, 1973

Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘The extortion procedure again’, JRS 32 (1942)
43-55

Sherwin-White, A. N. ‘Poena legis repetundarum’, PBSR 17 (1949) 5-25
Simshauser, W. Iuridici und Munizipalgerichtsbarkeit in Italien (MinchBeitr
Papyr 61). Munich, 1973, ch. 2, ‘Zur Entstehung der Munizi-
palgerichtsbarkeit in Italien’

Staveley, E. S. ‘The reform of the comitia centuriata’, 4JPh 74 (1953)
1-3

Staveley, E. S. ‘The constitution of the Roman Republic’, Historia 5
(1956) 74-122

Staveley, E. S. ‘Cicero on the comitia centuriata’, Historia 11 (1962) 299-
314

Staveley, E. S. Greek and Roman Voting and Elections, London and
Southampton, 1972, Part II, ‘Rome’

Stevenson, G. H. Roman Provincial Administration. Oxford, 1939
Strachan-Davidson, J. L. Problems of the Roman Criminal Law. 2 vols.
Oxford, 1912

Sumner, G. V. ‘Cicero on the comitia centuriata. De re publica 11. 22.39-
40’, AJP 81 (1960) 136-56

Sumner, G. V. ‘Lex Aelia, lex Fufia’, AJPh 94 (1963) 337-58

Sumner, G. V. ‘Cicero and the comitia centuriata’, Historia 13 (1964) 125-8
Szemler, G. J. The Priests of the Roman Republic: a Study of Interactions
between Priesthoods and Magistracies (Coll. Latomus 127). Brussels, 1972
Taylor, L. R. ‘The centuriate assembly before and after the reform’,
AJPh 78 (1957) 337-54

Taylor, L. R. The Voting Districts of the Roman Republic (MAAR 20).
Rome, 1960

Taylor, L. R. Roman Voting Assemblies. Ann Arbor, 1966

Thomas, J. A. C. ‘The development of Roman criminal law’, Law

Quarterly Review 79 (1963) 224-37

159.
160,
161.
162.

163.

164.

165.
166,

167.
168.

170.
171.

172.

173.
174.

175.
176.

177-

179.

180.

PRIVATE LAW 855

Thomas, Y.-P. ‘Parricidium I’, MEFRA 93 (1981) 643-715

Tibiletti, G. ‘Le leggi de éudictis repetundarum fino alla guerra sociale’, Studi
offerti dai discepoli a P. Fraccaro per tl suo LXX genetliaco, Athenaeum 31
(1953), 5100 :

Tibiletti, G. “The comitia during the decline of the Roman Republic’,
SDHI 25 (1959) 94-127

Tyrrell, W. B. ‘The duumviri in the trials of Horatius, Manlius and
Rabirius’, ZSS 91 (1974) 106-25

von Ungern-Sternberg, J. Untersuchungen zum spatrepublikanischen
Notstandsrecht: senatus consultum ultimum und hostis-Erklarung (Vestigia 11).
Munich, 1970

von Ungern-Sternberg, J. ‘The end of the conflict of the orders’, Social
Struggles in Archaic Rome. New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders, ed.
K. A. Raaflaub, Berkeley, 1986, 353-77

Venturini, C. Studi sul ‘crimen repetundarum’ nell’ eta repubblicana. Milan,
1979

Volk, A. Die Verfolgung der Kérperverletzung im frithen rémischen Recht
(Forschungen zum rém. Recht 35). Vienna, 1984

Volterra, E. Bibliografia di diritto agrario romano. Florence, 1951
Weinrib, E. J. ‘The prosecution of Roman magistrates’, Phoenix 22
(1968) 32-56

Weinrib, E. J. ‘The judiciary law of M. Livius Drusus’, Historia 19 (1978)
414743

Weinstock, S. ‘Clodius and the lex Aelia Fufia’, JRS 27 (1937) 215-22
Wieacker, F. Romische Rechtsgeschichte 1, Einleitung, Quellenkunde, Frihgeit
und Republik (Handbuch der Altertumswissenchaft x.3. 1, 1). Munich,
1988

Willems, P. Le sénat de la république romaine. 2 vols, 1 Louvain, Paris and
Berlin, 1878, repr, 1885, 1 Louvain, 1883

Wiseman, T. P. “The census in the first century B.c.’, JRS 59 (1969) 59-75
Zumpt, A. W. Das Criminalrecht der rémischen Republik. 2 vols. Berlin,
1865-9

b. PRIVATE LAW

Ankum, H. ‘Denegatio actionis’, ZSS 102 (1985) 453-69

Archi, G. G. Problemi in tema di falso nel diritto romano. Pavia, 1941
Bauman, R. A. ‘Five pronouncements by P. Mucius Scaevola’, RIDA 25
(1978) 223-45

Bauman, R. A. Lawyers in Roman Republican Politics. A Study of the Roman
Jurists in their Political Setting, 316-82 B.C. (MiinchBeitrPapyr 75). Munich,
1983

Bauman, R. A. Lawyers in Roman Transitional Politics. A Study of the Roman
Jurists in their Political Setting in the Late Republic and Triumvirate (Miinch
BeitrPapyr 79). Munich, 1985

Behrends, O. Die Wissenschaftslehre im Zivilrecht des O. Mucius Scaevola
Pontifex (NAWG 1976, no. 7)

856

181.
182.
183.
184.
185.
186.
187.
188.
189.

190.

191.

192.

193.

194.
195.
196.
197.
198.
199.
200.
201.
202.
203.
204.

205.

206.

F. THE LAW

Behrends, O. ‘Les “‘veteres” et la nouvelle jurisprudence 4 Ia fin de la
République’, RD 55 (1977) 7-33

Behrends, O. ‘Institutionelles und prinzipielles Denken im romischen
Privatrecht’, ZSS 95 (1978) 187-231

Behrends, O. Prinzipat und Sklavenrecht. Gottingen, 1980

Behrends, O. Die Fraus Legis. Géttingen, 1982

Behrends, O. ‘Le due giurisprudenze romane e le forme delle loro
argomentazioni’, Index 12 (1983-4) 189-225

Birks, P. ‘From legis actio to formula’, The Irish Jurist 4 (1969) 356-67
Birks, P. ‘The early history of iniuria’, RHD 37 (1969) 163-208

Bona, F. ‘Sulla fonte di Cicerone de oratore I 56, 239-40 e sulla
cronologia dei “‘decem libelli” di P. Mucio Scevola’, SDHI 39 (1973)
425-80

Bongert, Y. ‘Recherches sur les récupérateurs’, in his Varia. Etudes de
droit romain, Paris, 1952, 99-266

Bretone, M. Tecniche e ideologie dei giuristi romani. Naples, 1971

Bund, E. ‘Die Fiktion “pro non scripto habetur” als Beispiel
fiktionsbewirkter Interpretation’, Sein und Werden im Recht, Festgabe fir
Ulrich von Liibtow zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. W. G. Becker and L. Schnorr
von Carolsfeld, Berlin, 1970, 352-80

Bund, E. ‘Zur Argumentation der romischen Juristen’, Studi in onore di
Edoardo Volterra 1, Rome, 1971, §71-87

Bund, E. ‘Rahmenerwagungen zu einem Nachweis stoischer Gedanken
in der romischen Jurisprudenz’, De Iustitia et Iure, Festgabe fur Ulrich von
Libtow zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. M. Harder and G. Thielmann, Berlin,
1980, 127-45

Cancelli, F. ‘Per una revisione del ‘‘cavere” dei giureconsulti
repubblicani’, Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra v, Rome, 1971, 611-45
Ciulei, G. L’équité chez Cicéron. Amsterdam, 1972

Crook, J. A. ‘Patria potestas’, CO 17 (1967) 113-22

Crook, J. A. ‘A study in decoction’, Latomus 26 (1967) 363-76

Crook, J. A. ‘Intestacy in Roman society’, PCPAS 19 (1973) 38-44
Crook, J. A. ‘Sponsione provocare: its place in Roman litigation’, JRS
66 (1976) 132-8

Daube, D. ‘Licinnia’s dowry’, Studi in onore di Biondo Biondi 1, Milan, 1963,
199-212

Ducos, M. Les romains et la loi: recherches sur les rapports de la philosophie
grecque et de la tradition romaine a la fin de la République. Paris, 1984

Ebert, U. Die Geschichte des Edikts de hominibus armatis coactisue
(Heidelberger rechtsw. Abh. 23). Heidelberg, 1968

Frezza, P. ‘Storia del processo civile in Roma fino alla eta di Augusto’,
ANRW 1.2 (1972) 163-96

Frier, B. W. ‘Urban praetors and rural violence. The legal background of
Cicero’s pro Caecina’, TAPhA 113 (1983) 221-41

Frier, B. W. The Rise of the Roman Jurist. Studies in Cicero’s pro Caecina.
Princeton, 1985

Galsterer, H. ‘Diritto e scienza giuridica in Grecia e Roma’, CS 17 (1980)
185-98

207.

208.

209,

210.

201.

212.

213.

214.

215.

216.
217.

218.

219.

220,

221.

222.

223.
224.

225.

226.
227.

228.

229.

231.

PRIVATE LAW 857

Gardner, J. F. Women in Roman Law and Society. London and Sydney,
1986

Girard, P. F. Histoire de organisation judiciaire des romains 1, Les six premiers
siécles de Rome (all published). Paris, 1901

Grosso, G. ‘Publio Mucio Scevola tra il diritto e la politica’, AG 175
(1968) 204-11

Grosso, G. ‘Schemi giuridici e societa dall’epoca arcaica di Roma alla
giurisprudenza classica: lo sviluppo e 1a elaborazione dei diritti limitati
sulle cose’, ANRW 1.2 (1972) 134-62

Guarino, A. Diritto privato romano. 6th edn, Naples, 1981

Harris, W. V. “The Roman father’s power of life and death’, Studies in
Roman Law in Memory of A. Arthur Schiller, ed. R. S. Bagnall and W. V.
Harris, Leiden, 1986, 81-95

Hoffman, R. J. ‘Civil law procedures in the provinces of the late Roman
Republic’, The Irish Jurist 11 (1976) 355-74

Horak, F. Rationes decidendi. Entscheidungsbegriindungen bei den alteren
romischen Juristen bis Labeo 1. Aalen, 1969

Horak, F. Rev. of Behrends, Wissenschaftslebre and Schiavone, Nascita
della giurisprudenza, ZSS 95 (1978) 402-21

d’Ippolito, F. ‘Sextus Aelius “Catus”’, Labeo 17 (1971) 271-83
d'Ippolito, F. I giuristi e la citta, ricerche sulla giurisprudenza romana della
repubblica. Naples, 1978

Jolowicz, H. F. ‘The judex and the arbitral principle’, Mé/anges F. De
Visscher 1, RIDA 3 (1949) 477-92

Kaser, M. ‘Partus ancillae’, ZSS 75 (1958) 156-200

Kaser, M. Das rémische Zivilprozessrecht (Handb. d. Altertumswissensch.
x.3.4). Munich, 1966

Kaser, M. ‘Die Beziehung von /ex und évs und die XT Tafeln’, Studi in
memoria di Guido Donatuti 1, Milan, 1973, 523-46

Kaser, M. Uber Verbotsgesetze und verbotswidrige Geschafte im rémischen
Recht (SAWW 312). Vienna, 1977

Kaser, M. ‘“‘Tus honorarium” und “‘ius civile”’, ZSS 101 (1984) 1-114
Kaser,M. ‘Uber “relatives Eigentum”’ im altrémischen Recht’, ZSS 102
(1985) 1-39

Kelly, J. M. ‘The growth-pattern of the praetor’s edict’, The Irish Jurist 1
(1966) 341-55

Kelly, J. M. Roman Litigation. Oxford, 1966

Kelly, J. M. Studies in the Civil Judicature of the Roman Republic. Oxford,
1976

Kunkel, W. Herkunft und soziale Stellung der romischen Jnristen
(Forschungen zum rom. Recht 4). Weimar, 1952, rev. Graz, Vienna and
Cologne, 1967

Kunkel, W. ‘Legal thought in Greece and Rome’, Juridical Review 65
(1953) 1-16

Labruna, L. ‘Plauto, Manilio, Catone: premesse allo studio dell’ ““emptio
consensuale”’, Studi in onore di Edoardo Volterra V, Rome, 1971, 23-50
Lacey, W. K. ‘Patria potestas’, The Family in Ancient Rome, ed. B.
Rawson, London, 1986, 121-44

p “cc

858

232.
233.
234.
235.
236.
237.
238.
239.

240.

241.

242.

243.

244.
245.

246.
247.

248.
249.

250.
251.
252.

253.
254.

255.

256.

F. THE LAW

Lewis, A. D. E. ‘The trichotomy in locatio conductio’, The Irish Jurist 8
(1973) 164-77
Lindsay, R. J. M. ‘Defamation and the law under Sulla’, CPA 44 (1949)
240-3
Lombardi, L. Dalla ‘fides’ alla ‘bona fides’. Milan, 1961
von Liibtow, U. ‘Cicero und die Methode der rémischen Jurisprudenz’,
Festschr. fiir Leopold Wenger zu seinem 70. Geburtstag dargebracht von
Freunden, Fachgenossen und Schilern 1, Munich, 1944, 224-35
von Libtow, U. ‘Die Ursprungsgeschichte der exceptio doli und der
actio de dolo malo’, Eranion Maridakis 1, Athens, 1963, 183-201
von Libtow, U. ‘Die Aufgaben des romischen Praetors’, Studi in onore di
Arnaldo Biscardi 1v, Milan, 1983, 349-412
Luraschi, G. ‘Sulla data e sui destinatari della “lex Minicia de liberis’’’,
SDHI 42 (1976) 431-43
Magdelain, A. Le consensualisme dans l’édit du preteur (Publ. de linst. de
droit romain de Univ. de Paris 18). Paris, 1958
Magdelain, A. ‘Les mots /egare et heres dans la loi des XII Tables’,
Hommages a Robert Schilling, ed. H. Zehnacker and G. Hentz, Paris, 1983,
159-73
Manfredini, A. D. Conéributo allo studio dell iniuria in eta repubblicana.
Milan, 1977
Manfredini, A. D. La diffamagione verbale nel diritto romano 1, Eta
repubblicana. Milan, 1979
Marshall, A. J. ‘The case of Valeria: an inheritance dispute in Roman
Asia’, CQ 25 (1975) 82-7
Martini, R. Ricerche in tema di editto provinciale. Milan, 1969
Metro, A. ‘La lex Cornelia de iurisdictione alla luce di Dio Cass. 36.40. 1—
2’, Iura 20 (1969) 500-24
Metro, A. La denegatio actionis. Milan, 1972
Mette, H. J. Das rémische Zivilrecht zu Beginn des Jabres 46 vor Christus.
Heidelberg, 1974
Nicholas, B. Aa Introduction to Roman Law. Oxford, 1962
Norr, D. Divisio und Partitio. Bemerkungen zur rémischen Rechtsquellenlehre
und zur antiken Wissenschaftstheorie. Berlin, 1972
Norr D. ‘Pomponius, oder zum Geschichtsverstandtnis der romischen
Juristen’, ANRW 11.15 (1976) 497-Goq
Norr, D. Causa Mortis. Auf den Spuren einer Redewendung (MinchBeitr Papyr
80). Munich, 1986
Partsch, J. Die Schriftform im rémischen Provingialprozesse. Breslau, 1905
Plescia, J. “The development of Iniuria’, Labeo (1977) 271-89
Polak, J. M. “The Roman conception of the inviolability of the house’,
Symbolae ad Jus et Historiam Antiquitatis pertinentes Julio Christiano van Oven
dedicatae, ed, M. David, B. A. van Groningen and E. M. Meijers, Leiden,
1946, 251-68
Polay, E. ‘Der Kodifikationsplan des Pompetus’, A_AmtHung 13 (1965)
85-95
Polay, E. ‘Der Kodifizierungsplan des Julius Caesar’, Ivra 16 (1965)
27-51

257.

258.

259.

260.
261.

262.
263.
264.
265.
266.
267.

268.
269.

270.
271.
272.
273.

274.

275.

276.

277.

278.

279.

PRIVATE LAW 859

Prichard, A. M. ‘The origins of the “legis actio per condictionem”’,
Synteleia Vincenzo Arangio-Ruiz, ed. A. Guarino and L. Labruna, I,
Naples, 1964, 261-8

Pugliese, G. ‘Intorno al supposto divieto di modificare legislativamente
il ins civile’, Atti del congresso internaz. di diritto romano e di storia del diritto,
Verona 27-28-29-1X-1948, tt, Milan, 1951, 61-84

de Robertis, F. M. Storia delle cor porazioni e del regime associativo nel mondo
romano. Bari, 1971

Sacconi, G. ‘Appunti sulla lex Aebutia’, AG 197 (1979) 63-93

di Salvo, S. ‘Lex Laetoria’. Minore eta e crisi sociale tra il HT e il I a.C.
Camerino, 1979

Sargenti, M. ‘Studi sulla “‘restitutio in integrum”’, BIDR 8 (1966)
194-298

Schiavone, A. Nascita della giurisprudenga: cultura aristocratica e pensiero
giuridico nella Roma tardo-repubblicana. Rome and Bari, 1976

Schiller, A. Arthur, Roman Law. Mechanisms of Development. The Hague,
Paris and New York, 1978

Schmidlin, B. Das Re&uperatorenverfabren. Eine Studie zum rontischen
Progess. Friburg, Switzerland, 1963

Schmidlin, B. ‘Horoi, pithana und regulae’, ANRW 11.15 (1976) 101-30
Schulz, F. Principles of Roman Law. Oxford, 1936

Schulz, F. Roman Legal Science. Oxford, 1946, repr. 1953

Seidl, E. ‘Prolegomena zu einer Methodenlehre der Romer’, A&tuelle
Fragen aus modernem Recht und Rechtsgeschichte, Gedachtnisschrift fiir Rudolf
Schmidt, ed. E. Seidl, Berlin, 1966

Smith, R. E. ‘The law of libel at Rome’, CQ 45 (1951) 169-79

Stein, P. G. Fault in the Formation of Contract in Roman Law and Scots Law.
Edinburgh, 1958

Stein, P. G. Regulae Iuris: From Juristic Rules to Legal Maxims. Edinburgh,
1966

Stein, P. G. ‘Logic and experience in Roman and Common Law’, Boston
University Law Review 59 (1974) 4377-51

Stein, P. G. ‘The place of Servius Sulpicius Rufus in the development of
Roman legal science’, Festschrift fir Franz Wieacker zum 70. Geburtstag,
ed. O. Behrends ef a/., Gottingen, 1978, 175-84

Stein, P. G. ‘The development of the institutional system’, Studies in
Justinian’ s Institutes in Memory of ]. A.C. Thomas, ed. P. G. Steinand A. D.
E. Lewis, London, 1983, 151-63

Sturm, F. Stipulatio Aquiliana: Textgestalt und Tragweite der aquilianischen
Ausgleichsquittung im klassischen rémischen Recht (MiinchBeitrPapyr 59).
Munich, 1972

Syme, R. ‘A great orator mislaid’, CQ 31 (1981) 421-7 (=A 119, UI,
1414-22)

Talamanca, M. ‘Lo schema ‘“‘genus-species” nelle sistematiche dei
giuristi romani’, Quaderno 221 11, 1-319, esp. 211ff

Thilo, R. M. Der codex accepti et expensi im romischen Recht. Ein Beitrag zur
Lehre von der Litteralobligation (GOttinger Studien zur Rechtsgeschichte
13). Géttingen, 1980

860
280.
281.
282.
283.
284.

285.

286.
287.

288.
289.
290.
291.
292.
293.
294.

295.
296.

297.
298.

299.
300.

301.

302.
303.

304.
305.

306.

307.

F. THE LAW

Thomas, J. A. C. Textbook of Roman Law. Amsterdam, New York and
Oxford, 1976

Thomas, Y.-P. ‘Le droit entre les mots et les choses. Rhétorique et
jurisprudence 4 Rome’, APAD 23 (1978) 93-114

Thomas, Y.-P. ‘Vitae necisque potestas’, Du Chatiment 499-5 48
Turpin, C. C. ‘Bonae fidei iudicia’, Cambridge Law Journal 1965, 260-70
Vigneron, R. ‘Résistance du droit romain aux influences hellénistiques:
le cas du dépot irrégulier’, RIDA 31 (1984) 307-24

Volk, A. ‘Zum Verfahren der “actio legis Corneliae de iniuriis”’,
Sodalitas: Scritti in onore di A. Guarino, 1, Naples, 1984/5, 561-613
Waldstein, W. ‘Zum Fall der “dos Licinniae”’’, Index 3 (1972) 343-61
Waldstein, W. ‘Entscheidungsgrundlagen der klassischen rémischen
juristen’, ANRW 11.15 (1976) 3-100

Waldstein, W. Operae libertorum: Untersuchungen zur Dienstpflicht
Jfreigelassener Sklaven (Forschungen zur antiken Sklavetei 19). Stuttgart,
1986

Watson, A. Contract of Mandate in Roman Law. Oxford, 1961

Watson, A. ‘Actio Serviana’, SDHI 27 (1961) 356-63

Watson, A. ‘Consensual societas between Romans and the introduction
of formulae’, RIDA 9 (1962) 431-6

Watson, A. ‘Some cases of distortion by the past in classical Roman law’,
RHD 31 (1963) 68-91

Watson, A. “The origins of consensual sale: a hypothesis’, RHD 32
(1964) 245-54

Watson, A. The Law of Obligations in the Later Roman Republic. Oxford,
1965

Watson, A. The Law of Persons in the Later Roman Republic. Oxford, 1967
Watson, A. ‘Morality, slavery and the jurists in the later Roman
Republic’, Tulane Law Review 42 (1967-8) 289-303

Watson, A. The Law of Property in the Later Roman Republic. Oxford, 1968
Watson, A. ‘Narrow, rigid and literal interpretation in the later Roman
Republic’, RHD 37 (1969) 351-68

Watson, A. Roman Private Law around 200 B.c. Edinburgh, 1971
Watson, A. The Law of Succession in the Later Roman Republic. Oxford,
1971

Watson, A. ‘Limits of juristic decision in the later Roman Republic’,
ANRYW 1.2 (1972) 215-25

Watson, A. ‘“TIus Aelianum” and “Tripertita”’, Labeo 19 (1973) 26-30
Watson, A. ‘The law of actions and the development of substantive law
in the early Roman Republic’, Law Quarterly Review 89 (1973) 387-92
Watson, A. Law Making in the Later Roman Republic. Oxford, 1974
Watson, A. Rome of the Twelve Tables. Persons and Property. Princeton,
1975

Wenger, L. Die Ouellen des rimischen Rechts, Vienna, 1953, 473-88, ‘Die
republikanische Jurisprudenz’

Wesel, U. ‘Uber den Zusammenhang der lex Furia, Voconia und

Falcidia’, ZSS 81 (1964) 308-16

299

308.

309.

310,
B11.

312,
313.

313A.

314.
315.

316.

317.

318.

319.

pw KR

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 861

Wesel, U. Rhetorische Statuslehre und Gesetzesauslegung der romischen Juristen.
Cologne, 1967

Wieacker, F. Vom romischen Recht. Zehn Versuche. 2nd edn, Stuttgart,
1961

Wieacker, F. ‘Zum Ursprung der bonae fidei iudicia’, ZSS 80 (1963) 1-41
Wieacker, F. ‘Die XII Tafeln in ihrem Jahrhundert’, Entretiens Hardt 13
(1967) 291-362

Wieacker, F. ‘The Causa Curiana and contemporary Roman
jurisprudence’, The Irish Jurist 2 (1967) 151-64

Wieacker, F. ‘Uber das Verhiltnis der romischen Fachjurisprudenz zur
griechisch-hellenistischen Theorie’, Iura 20 (1969) 448-77

Wieacker, F. ‘Die romischen Juristen in der politischen Gesellschaft des
zweiten vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts’, Sei und Werden im Recht, Festgabe
fiir Ulrich von Liibtow zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. W.G. Becker and L. Schnorr
von Carolsfeld, Berlin 1970, 183-214

Wieacker, F. Rev. of Horak, Rationes Decidendi, ZSS 88 (1971) 339-55
Wieacker, F. ‘Zur Rolle des Arguments in der roémischen Jurisprudenz’,
Festchr. fiir Max Kaser zum 70. Geburtstag am 21. April 1976, ed.
D. Medicus and H. H. Seiler, Munich, 1976, 3-27

Wieacker, F. ‘Altromische Priesterjurisprudenz’, Iuris Professio, Festgabe
ftir Max Kaser zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. H.-P. Benohr ef a/., Vienna,
Cologne and Graz, 1986, 347-70

Wieling, H. J. Testamentsauslegung im romischen Recht (MinchBeitrPapyr
62). Munich, 1972

Wolf, J. G. ‘Zur legis actio sacramento in rem’, Réwmisches Recht in der
europaischen Tradition, Symposion aus Anlass des 75. Geburtstages von Franz
Wieacker, ed. O. Behrends ef al, Edelsbach, 1985, 1-39

Yaron, R. ‘Vitae necisque potestas’, RHD 30 (1962) 243-51

G. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Abbott, F. F. The Common People of Ancient Rome. London, 1912
Almagia, R. and Miglioni, E. Le regions d'Italia. 18 vols. Turin, 1961-5
André J. L’alimentation et la cuisine a Rome. znd edn, Paris, 1981
Andreau, J. Les affaires de Monsieur Jucundus (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 19).
Rome, 1974

Andreau, J. ‘Histoire des métiers bancaires et évolution économique’,
Opus 3 (1984) 99-114

Andreau, J. La vie financiére dans le monde romain: les métiers de manieurs
d'argent (IV siécle av. J.-C. — ILE siécle ap. J.-C.) (BEF AR 265). Rome,
1987

Andreau, J. ‘M. I. Finley, la banque antique et l'économie moderne’,
ASNP 7 (1977) 1129752

Atlante aerofotografico delle sedi umane in Italia. Florence, 1964-70
Bagnall, S. and Bogaert, R. ‘Orders for payment froma banker’s archive,
papyri in the collection of Florida State University’, AncSoc 6 (1975)
79-108

12.
13.
14.

18.
19.
20.
21.
22,

23.
24.
25.

26,

27.

28.

G. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Bandelli, G. ‘Per una storia agraria di Aquilea repubblicana’, Ass de/
Museo di Trieste 13 (1983/4) 93-111

Barker, G. and Hodges, R. (ed.), Archaeology and Italian Society (BAR
Internat. ser. 102). Oxford, 1981

Barrow, R. H. Slavery in the Roman Empire. London, 1928

Beloch, K. J. Die Bevolkerung der griechisch-rimischen Welt. Leipzig, 1886
Beloch, K. J. ‘La popolazione della Gallia al tempo di Cesare’; ‘Per la
storia della popolazione nell’antichita’; ‘La popolazione dell’ antichita’,
coll. (with essays by E. Ciccotti, A. Holm, O. Seeck and E. Kornemann)
by V. Pareto in Biblioteca di Studi Economichi 1v, Milan, 1909

Besnier, M. ‘L’interdiction du travail des mines en Italie sous la
République’, R.A 10 (1919) 31-50

Bodei Giglioni, G. Lavori pubblici e occupazione nell’antichita classica.
Bologna, 1974

Bodei Giglioni, G. ‘Pecunia fanatica. L’incidenza economica dei templi
laziali’, RST 89 (1977) 33-76, repr. in B 273, 185-207

Bodel, J. ‘Trimalchio and the candelabrum’, CP 84 (1989) 224-31
Bogaert, R. Les origines antiques de la banque de dépét. Leiden, 1966
Bogaert, R. Banques et banquiers dans les cités grecques. Leiden, 1968

Les bourgeoisies. See Abbreviations

Brunt, P. A. ‘The fiscus and its development’, JRS 56 (1966) 75-91 (=A
20, 134-62)

Brunt, P. A. ‘The Roman mob’, Pe»P 35 (1966) 3-27, repr. in Studies in
Ancient Society, ed. M. 1. Finley, London, 1974, 74-102

Brunt, P. A. rev. of F. P. White, Roman Farming, JRS 62 (1972) 153-8
Brunt, P. A. “Two great Roman landowners’, Latomus 34 (1975) 619-35
Brunt, P. A. ‘Free labour and public works at Rome’, JRS 70 (1980)
81-100

Brunt, P. A. ‘The revenues of Rome’, JRS 71 (1981) 161-72, repr. with
additions, a 20, 324~46

Burford, A. M. ‘Heavy transport in classical antiquity’, Economic Hist.
Review 13 (1960-1) 1-18

Burford, A. M. Craftsmen in Greek and Roman Society. London, 1972
Capogrossi Colognesi, L. La struttura della proprieta e la formazione dei iura
praediorum nell eta repubblicana. 2 vols. Milan, 1969 and 1976
Capogrossi Colognesi, L. La terra in Roma antica 1. Rome, 1981
Capogrossi Colognesi, L. L’agricoltura romana. Bari, 1982

Carandini, A. ‘Hortensia. Orti e frutteti intorno a Roma’, Misurare la
terra 5, 66-74

Carcopino, J. La loi de Hiéron et les Romains. Paris, 1914

Cassola, F. ‘Romani e Italici in oriente’, Roma e l’Italia, 305-22
Casson, L. Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World. Princeton, 1971
Castagnoli, F. ‘Installazioni portuali a Roma’, Seaborne Commerce 45-42
Cels-Saint-Hilaire, J. ‘Les /ibertini: des mots et des choses’, DHA 11
(1985) 331-79

Chevallier, R. Roman Roads, transl. by N. H. Field. London, 1976
Clemente, G. ‘Le leggi sul lusso e la societa romana tra III e II sec. a.C.’,

42.

43.

43A.

44.

45.

47.

48.
49-

50.

51.
52.

53.
54.
55.

56.
57-

58.
59:

6o.
61.

62.

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 863

Societa romana Wi, 1-14

Coarelli, F. ‘Architettura e arti figurative in Roma, 150-50 a.C.’,
Hellenismus, 21-51

Coarelli, F. ‘Public building in Rome between the second Punic War and
Sulla’, PBSR 45 (1977) 1-23

Coarelli, F. ‘I santuari del Lazio e della Campania tra i Gracchie le guerre
civili’, Les Bourgeoisies, 217-40

Coarelli, F. ‘Architettura sacra e architettura privata nella tarda
repubblica’, Architecture et société de l'archaisme grec a la fin de la république
romaine, 1983, 191-217

Colini, A. M. ‘Il porto fluviale del foro boario a Roma’, Seaborne
Commerce, 43-53

Cori, B. The Italian Settlement System. Warsaw, 1979

Crawford, M. H. ‘Rome and the Greek world: economic relationships’,
Economic Hist. Review 30 (1977) 42-52

Crawford, M. H. ‘Economia imperiale e commercio estero’, Tecnologia,
207-17

Crawford, M. H. La moneta in Grecia e a Roma. Bari, 1982

D’Achiardi, G. ‘L’industria metallurgica a Populonia’, SE 3 (1929)
397-404

D’Arms, J. H. Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome. Cambridge,
MA and London, 1981

D’Arms, J. H., rev. of Fabre, Libertus, CPh 79 (1984) 170-4

D’Arms, J. H. and Kopff, E., (ed.) The Seaborne Commerce of Ancient Rome
(MAAR 36). Rome, 1980 (also in Abbreviations)

David, J.-M. ‘Promotion civique et droit a la parole: L. Licinius Crassus,
les accusateurs et les rhéteurs latins’, MEFRA 91 (1979) 135-81
David, J.-M. ‘Les orateurs des municipes a Rome: intégration, réticences
et snobismes’, Les Bourgeoisies, 309-23

Delplace, C. ‘Les potiers dans la société et l'économie de I’Italie et de la
Gaule au ler siécle av. et au Jer siécle ap. J.-C.’, Ktema 3 (1978) 55-76
Les dévaluations. See Abbreviations

Dixon, S. ‘The marriage alliance in the Roman elite’, Journal of Family
History 10 (1985) 353-78

Dumont, J. C. Servus. Rome et lesclavage sous la République. Rome, 1988
Dupont, F. La wie quotidienne du citoyen romain sous la république, yog—27 av.
Jj.C., Paris, 1989

Durand, J. D. ‘Mortality estimates from Roman tombstone
inscriptions’, American Journal of Sociology 65 (1959/60) 364-73

Dureau de la Malle, M. Economie politique des Romains. 2 vols. Paris, 1840,
repr. New York, 1971

Etienne, R. ‘Les rations alimentaires des esclaves de la familia rustica
d’aprés Caton’, Index 10 (1981) 66-78

Evans, J. K. ‘Plebs rustica’, AJ.AH 5 (1980) 19-47; 134-73

Evans, J. K. ‘Wheat production and its social consequences in the
Roman world’, CO 31 (1981) 428-42

Fabre, G. Libertus: recherches sur les rapports patron-affranchi a la fin de la

864

66.

7o.
71.
72.
73:
74:

75+
76.

77:
78.
79:

80.

87.

88.

89.

90.

gl.

G. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

République romaine (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 50). Paris, 1981

Fallu, E. ‘Les régles de la comptabilité a Rome 4 la fin de la republique’,
Points de vue, 97-112

Finley, M. I. (ed.) Studies in Roman Property, Cambridge, 1976
Flambard, J. M. ‘Collegia compitalicia: phénoméne associatif, cadres
territoriaux et cadres civiques dans le monde romain a l’époque
républicaine’, Ktema 6 (1981) 143-66

Flambard, J. M. ‘Les colléges et les élites locales a l’e€poque républicaine
d’aprés |’exemple de Capoue’, Les Bourgeoisies, 75-89

Forbes, R. J, Studies in Ancient Technology. 2nd edn, 9 vols. Leiden,
1964-72

Forni, G. ‘Problemi di ergologia virgiliana’, Mésurare la terra 2, 154
Fowler, W. Warde Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero. London, 1909
Frank, T. ‘Race mixture in the Roman empire’, AHR 21 (1915-16)
689-708

Fraschetti, A. “Per una prosopografia dello sfruttamento: romani e italici
in Sicilia (212-44 a.C.)’, Societa romana 1, 51-61

Frayn, J. M. Subsistence Farming in Roman Italy. London, 1979
Frederiksen, M. ‘Puteoli’, RE 23.2 (1959) 2036-60, revd. in his
Campania, 319-58

Frederiksen, M. ‘Theory, evidence, and the ancient economy’ (review of
M.I. Finley, The Ancient Economy), ]RS 65 (1975) 164-71

Frederiksen, M. ‘Caesar, Cicero, and the problem of debt’, JRS 56 (1966)
128-41

Frederiksen, M. ‘Changes in the patterns of settlement’, Hellenismus 1,
341-55

Frézouls, E. ‘Le théatre romain et la culture urbaine’, La citta antica come
fatto di cultura, Atti del convegno Como] Bellagio 1979, Como, 1983, 105-30
Frier, B. ‘The rental market in early imperial Rome’, JR.S 67 (1977) 27-37
Frier, B. Landlord and Tenant in Imperial Rome. Princeton, 1980

Frier, B. ‘Roman life expectancy: Ulpian’s evidence’, HSP4/ 86 (1982)
213-51

Friichtl, A. Die Geldgeschafte bei Cicero. Erlangen, 1912

Fussel, G. E. and Kenny, A. ‘Equipement d’une ferme romaine’, Annales
(ESC) 21 (1966) 306-23

Gabba, E. ‘Urbanizzazione e rinnovamenti urbanistici nell’Italia centro-
meridionale del I. sec. a.C.’, SCO 21 (1972) 73-112

Gabba, E. ‘Mercati e fiere nell’Italia romana’ (with append. by F.
Coarelli), SCO 24 (1975) 141-66

Gabba, E. ‘Considerazioni politiche ed economiche sullo sviluppo
urbano in Italia nei secoli I] e 1 a.C.’, Hellenismus 1, 315-26

Gabba, E. ‘Considerazioni sulla decadenza della piccola proprieta
contadina nell’Italia centro-meridionale del I]. sec. a.C.’, Ktema 2 (1977)
269-84

Gabba, E. ‘Per la tradizione dell’heredium romuleo’, RIL 112 (1978)
250-8

Gabba, E. ‘Strutture sociali e politica romana in Italia nel IT sec. a.C’. Les
Bourgeoisies

92.
93:
94:
95-
96.

97.
98.

99:

100.
101.
102.
103.

104.

105.
106.
107.

108.

109.

110,
111.

112.

113.

114.
115.

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 865

Gabba, E. ‘Per la storia della societa romana tardo-repubblicana’, Opus 1
(1982) 373-88

Gabba, E. ‘The collegia of Numa: problems of method and political
ideas’, JRS 74 (1984) 81-6

Gabba, E. ‘Per un’interpretazione storica della centuriazione romana’,
Athenaeum 63 (1985) 265-84

Gabba, E. and Pasquinucci, M. Strutture agrarie e allevamento transumante
nell’ Italia romana (III-I sec. a.C.). Pisa, 1979

Galsterer, H. ‘Urbanisation und Municipalisation’, Hellenismus 1,
327-33

Garnsey, P. ‘Where did Italian peasants live?’, PCPAS 25 (1979) 1-25
Garnsey, P. ‘Non-slave labour in the Roman World’, Non-slave Labour
34-47

Garnsey, P. ‘Independent freedmen and the economy of Roman Italy
under the Principate’, K/io 63 (1981) 359-72

Garnsey, P. Famine and Food-Supply in the Graeco-Roman World.
Cambridge, 1988

Garnsey, P., Hopkins, K. and Whittaker, C. R. (eds.) Trade in the Ancient
Economy. London, 1983 (also in Abbreviations)

von Gerkan, A. ‘Die Einwohnerzahl Roms in der Kaiserzeit’, RAM 55
(1940) 149-95

Giardina, A. ‘Allevamento e economia della selva’, Societd romana 1,
87-114

Giardina, A. and Schiavone, A., ed. Societa romana e produzione schiavistica.
1. L’Italia: insediamenti e forme economiche, 11. Merci, mercati e scambi, 11.
Modelli etici, diritto e trasformazioni sociali (Atti del colloguio Pisa, 1979) Bari,
1981. (Discussion, Opus 1 (1982) 371-439 and D. Rathbone G 208 below.
Also in Abbreviations

Girri, G. La taberna nel quadro urbanistico e sociale di Ostia. Milan, 1956
Giuffré, V. ‘Mutuo’, Enciclopedia del Diritto xxvut, Milan, 1977, 411-44
Glautier, M. W. E. ‘A study in the development of accounting in Roman
times’, RIDA 19 (1972) 311-43

Gratwick, A. S. ‘Free or not so free? Wives and daughters in the late
Roman Republic’, Marriage and Property, ed. E. M. Craik, Aberdeen,
1984, 30-53

Gros, P. Architecture et société a Rome et en Italie centro-méridionale aux deux
derniers siécles de la République (Coll. Latomus 156). Brussels, 1978
Gummerus, H. ‘Industrie und Handel’, RE 9.2 (1916) 1381-535
Habermann, W. ‘Ostia, Getreidehandelshafen Roms’, Maéinstersche
Beitrdge zur antiken Handelsgeschichte t.1 (1982) 35-59

Hahn, I. ‘Der Klassenkampf der plebs urbana in den letzten Jahrzehnten
der rémischen Republik’, Die Rolle der Volksmassen, ed. J. Herrmann,
Berlin, 1975, 121-46

Harper, J. ‘Slaves and freedmen in imperial Rome’, 4] PA 93 (1972) 341-
2

Havas, L. ‘The plebs Romana in the late Gos B.c.’, ACD 15 (1979) 23-33
Healy, J. F. Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman World. London,

1978

866

116,

117.
118,
119.

120.
121.
122,
123.

124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.

130.

132.

133,
134.

135.

137.
138.
139.
140.
141.

142.

143.
144.

G. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Heitland, W. E. Agricola, A Study of Agriculture and Rustic Life in the
Greco-Roman World from the Point of View of Labour. Cambridge, 1921
Helen, T. ‘Organisation of Roman brick production’, AIRF 9 (1975)
I-21

Hermansen, G. ‘The population of imperial Rome: the Regionaries’,
Historia 27 (1978) 129-68

Herzog, R. ‘Tesserae nummulariae’, Abb. der giessener Hochschulgesellschaft 1
(1919) 1-42

Herzog, R. ‘Nummularius’, RE 17 (1937) 1415755

Hinrichs, F. Die Geschichte der gromatischen Institutionen. Wiesbaden, 1974
Hoffmann, W. and Siber, H. ‘Plebs’, RE 21.1 (1957) 73-187

Hopkins, K. ‘Economic growth and towns in classical antiquity’, Towns
in Society, ed. P. Abrams and E. A. Wrigley, Cambridge, 1978, 35-78
Hopkins, K. ‘Taxes and trade in the Roman Empire’, JRS 70 (1980)
101-25

Hubner, E. ‘Quaestiones onomatologicae Latinaet, nomina in -anus’, Ephemeris
Epigrapbica 11 (1875) 25-92

Humphrey, J. Roman Circuses. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986
Huttunen, P. The Social Strata in the City of Rome. Oulu, 1974.

L’impero romano. See Abbreviations

Jacota, M. ‘La condition de l’esclave agricole’, Etudes offertes a J.
Macqueron, Aix-en-Provence, 1970, 375~83

Jones, A. H. M. ‘The Roman civil service (clerical and sub-clerical
grades)’, JRS 39 (1949) 38-55 (=F 87, 151-75)

Jones, A. H. M. The Roman Economy. Studies in Ancient Economic and
Administrative History, posth., ed. P. A. Brunt, Oxford, 1974

Jones, R. F. J. and Bird, D. J. ‘Roman gold mining in north-west Spain
ur: workings on the Rio Duerna’, JRS 62 (1972) 59-74

Jongman, W. The Economy and Society of Pompeii. Amsterdam, 1988
Jouanique, P. ‘Le codex accepti et expenst chez Cicéron. Etude d’ histoire
de la comptabilité’, RD 46 (1968) 5-31

Kahrstedt, U. ‘Ager publicus und Selbstverwaltung in Lukanien und
Bruttium’, Historia 8 (1959) 174-206

Kampen, N. Image and Status: Roman Working Women in Ostia. Berlin,
1981

Kleberg, T. Hétels, restaurants et cabarets dans 'antiquité romaine. Uppsala,
1957

Kniep, F. Societas Publicanorum 1 (all pubd.). Jena, 1896

Kolendo, J. La traité agrononrique des Sasernae. Warsaw, 1973

Kolendo, J. L’agricoltura nell’ Italia romana (with pref. by A. Carandini).
Rome, 1980

De Laet, S. J. Portorium, étude sur P organisation douaniére chez les Romains.
Bruges, 1949

Laffranque, M. ‘Poseidonios, Eudoxe de Cyzique et la circumnavigation
de l’Afrique’, R Philos 153 (1963) 199-222

Landels, J. G. Engineering in the Ancient World. London, 1978

Le Gall, J. Le Tibre, fleuve de Rome, dans l'antiquité. Paris, 1953

145.
14g.

146.
147.

148.
149.
150.
I§l.
1§2.
153.
154.
1$§.

156,
157.

159.
160.
161.

162.

164.
165.

166.

168.
169.

170.

171.
172.

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 867

Le Gall, J. ‘Rome, ville de fainéants?’, REL 49 (1971) 266-77
Linderski, J. ‘Garden parlours: nobles and birds’, in R. I. Curtis (ed.),
Studia Pompeiana et Classica in honour of Wilhelmina F. Jaskemski i, 202ff.
New York, 1988

Lipinsky, A. ‘Orafie argentieri’, L’urbe xx1v (1961) 3-14; 3 (1961) 3-13
Loane, H. J. Industry and Commerce of the City of Rome. Baltimore, 1938
Lo Cascio, E. ‘Obaerarii: la nozione della dipendenza in Varrone’, Index
11 (1982) 265-84

MacMullen, R. ‘Social history in astrology’, AmcSoc 2 (1971) 105-16
MacMullen, R. ‘How many Romans voted?’, Athenaeum 58 (1980) 454-7
Mancinetti Santamaria, G. ‘La concessione della cittadinanza a Greci ed
orientali nel Il e I sec. a.C’, Les Bourgeoisies 125-36

Marshall, A. J. ‘Roman women and the provinces’, AncSoc 6 (1975)
109-27

de Martino, F. Storia economica di Roma antica (1\ pensiero storico 75). 2
vols. Florence, 1979

de Martino, F. ‘Produzione di cereali in Roma nell’eta arcaica’, PP 34
(1979) 241-55

Maxey, M. Occupations of the Lower Classes in Roman Society. Chicago, 1938,
repr. New York, 1975

Meiggs, R. Roman Ostia. Oxford, 1960, 2nd edn, 1973

Meiggs, R. Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Oxford,
1982

Melillo, G., ed. Dae saggt intorno at concetti economici di valore nell’antichita
classica, 1886, 1889, H. v. Scheel e G. Alessio (Antiqua 13). Naples, 1981
Minto, A. ‘L’antica industria mineraria in Etruria’, SE 8 (1934) 291-309
Mésurare Ja terra. See Abbreviations

Moeller, W. O. The Wool-Trade of Ancient Pompeii. Leiden, 1976
Molin, M. ‘Quelques considérations sur le chariot des vendanges de
Langres (Haute-Marne)’, Gallia 42 (1984) 97-114

Morel, J. P. ‘Céramiques d’Italie et céramiques hellénistiques’,
Hellenismus, 471-501

Morel, J. P. ‘La laine de Tarente’, Ktema 3 (1978) 93-110

Morel, J. P. ‘Aspects de l’artisanat dans la Grande Gréce romaine’ La
Magna Grecia (Atti del XV. convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia nell'eta
romana, Taranto, 1975), Naples, 1980, 263~324

Morel, J. P. ‘Les producteurs de biens artisanaux en Italie 4 la fin de la
République’, Les Bourgeotsies, 21-39

Morgan, M. G. ‘The introduction of the Aqua Marcia into Rome,
144-40 B.C.’, Philologus 122 (1978) 25-58

Moritz, L. A. Grain-Mills and Flour in Classical Antiquity. Oxford, 1958
Mrozek, S. ‘Crastulum et mulsum dans les villes italiennes’, Athenaeum 50
(1972) 294-300

Nagle, D. B. ‘Toward a sociology of south-eastern Etruria’, Athenaeum
$7 (1979) 411-47

de Neeve, P. W. Colonus. Amsterdam, 1984

Nicolet, C. ‘Les variations des prix et la “théorie quantitative de la

868

173.
174.

175.

177.

178.

179.

180.
181.
182.

184.
185.
186,
187.

188,

190.
191.
192.
193.

194.
195.

196.

G. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

monnaie”’ a Rome de Cicéron 4 Pline l’ancien’, Annales( ESC) 26 (1971)
1203-27

Nicolet, C. ‘Polybius v1.17.4 and the composition of the socéetates
publicanorum’, The Irish Jurist 6 (1971) 163-76

Nicolet, C. Tributum. Recherches sur la fiscalité directe sous la République
romaine (Antiquitas Reihe 1 24). Bonn, 1976

Nicolet, C. ‘Deux remarques sur l’organisation des sociétés de publicains
a la fin de la République romaine’, Points de vue, 69-95

Nicolet, C. ‘Economie, société et institutions au II* siécle av. ].-C.’,
Ann(ESC) 35 (1980) 871-94

Nicolet, C. ‘Pline, Paul et la théorie de la monnaie’, Athenaeum 62 (1984)
105-35

Nicolet, C. ‘Il pensiero economico dei Romani’, Storia della idee politiche,
economiche e sociali 1, ed. L. Firpo, Turin, 1982, 877-960 (=G 179, ch. 2)
Nicolet, C. Rendre a César: Economie et sociéé dans la Rome antique. Paris,
1988, of which Ch. 1, ‘Economie et société’, is the present ch. X VI before
translation and Ch. 2, ‘La pensée économique des Romains’, is no. 178
above before translation

Nissen, H. Italische Landeskunde. 2 vols. Berlin, 1883-1902

Non-slave labour. See Abbreviations

Oliver, E. H. Roman Economic Conditions to the Close of the Republic.
Toronto, 1907

Des ordres a Rome, sous la direction de Claude Nicolet (Publications de la
Sorbonne, Sér. hist. ancienne et mediévale 13). Paris, 1984 (also in
Abbreviations)

Packer, }. E. ‘Housing and population in imperial Rome and Ostia’, JRS
57 (1967) 80-95

Panella, C. ‘I commerci di Roma e di Ostia in eta imperiale’, Misurare la
terra V, 180-89

Park, M. E. The Plebs in Cicero’s Day, a Study of their Provenance and of their
Employment. Cambridge, MA, 1918, repr. New York, 1975

Parker, A. J. ‘Shipwrecks and ancient trade in the Mediterranean’,
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 3.2 (1984) 99-113

Paterson, J. ‘Salvation from the sea: amphorae and trade in the Roman
west’, JRS 72 (1982) 146-57

Perelli, L. ‘La chiusura delle miniere macedoni dopo Pidna’, RFIC 103
(1975) 403-12

Persson, A. W. Staat und Manufaktur im rémischen Reiche. Lund, 1923
Pleket, H. W. rev. of Trade, Gnomon 57 (1985) 148-54

Points de vue. See Abbreviations

Pomey, P. and Tchernia, A. ‘Il tonnellagio massimo delle navi mercantili
romane’, Puteoli 4/5 (1981) 29-59

Potter, T. W. The Changing Landscape of South Etruria. London, 1979
Pritchard, R. T. ‘Land tenure in Sicily in the 1st century B.c.’, Historia 18
(1969) 545-56

Produccion y comercio del aceite en la Antigiiedad (1st Internat. Congr.). Madrid,
1980

197.
198.
199.
200.
201.
202.
203.
204.
205.
206.
207.
208.
209.
210,
211.
212.
213.
214.

215.

216,

217.

218,

219.

220.
221.

222.
223.

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 869

Prugni, G. ‘Ouirites, Athenaeum 65 (1987) 121-61

Pucci, G. ‘La produzione della ceramica aretina’, DArch 7 (1973) 255-93
Purcell, N. ‘The apparitores, a study in social mobility’, PBSR 51 (1983)
125-73

Purcell, N. ‘Wine and wealth-in ancient Italy’, JRS 75 (1985) 1-19
Purcell, N. ‘The Nicopolitan synoecism and Roman urban policy’,
Nikopolis t (Proceedings of the rst Internat. Symposium on Nikopolis, 23-9
Sept. 1984), ed. E. Chrysos, Preveza, 1987, 71-90

Purcell, N. ‘Tomb and suburb’, Rémische Graberstrassen: Selbstdarstellung,
Status, Standard, ed. H. von Hesberg and P. Zanker, Munich, 1987, 25-41
Radke, G. ‘Viae publicae Romanae’, RE Suppl. 13 (1973) 1417-686
Radke, G. ‘Wollgebilde an den Compitalia’, WA 9 (1983) 173-8
Radmilli, A. M. Popoli e civilta dell’ Italia antica 1. Rome, 1974

Ramage, E. S. ‘Urban problems in ancient Rome’ Aspects of Greek and
Roman Urbanism, Essays on the Classical City, ed. R. T. Marchese (BAR
Internat. ser. 188), Oxford, 1983

Rathbone, D. W. ‘The development of agriculture in the Ager Cosanus
during the Roman Republic’, J/RS 71 (1981) 10-23

Rathbone, D. W. rev. of Societa Romana, ]RS 73 (1983) 160-68
Rawson, E. D. ‘The Ciceronian aristocracy and its properties’, Studies in
Roman Property, ed. M. I. Finley, Cambridge, 1976, 85-102 (=A 94A,
204-22) i

Rawson, E. D. ‘Chariot-racing in the Roman Republic’, PBSR 49 (1981)
1-16 (=A 94A, 389-407)

Rickman, G. Roman Granaries and Store Buildings. Cambridge, 1971
Rickman, G. The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome. Oxford, 1979

Rini, A. ‘La plebe urbana a Roma dalla morte di Cesare alla sacrosancta
potestas di Ottaviano’, Epigrafia e territorio, politica e societa: temi di
antichita romane, ed. M. Pani, Bari, 1983, 161-90

Roddaz, J.-M. and Fabre, G. ‘Recherches sur la familia de M. Agrippa’,
Athenaeum 60 (1982) 84-112

Roma e !’Italia. See Abbreviations

Rougé, J. Recherches sur organisation du commerce maritime en Méditerranée
sous l empire romain. Paris, 1966

Rougé, J. ‘Prét et société maritime dans le monde romain’, Seaborne
Commerce, 291-304

Royer, J. P. ‘Le probléme des dettes 4 la fin de la République romaine’,
RD 45 (1967) 191-240; 407-50

de Ste Croix, G. E. M. ‘Greek and Roman Accounting’, Studies in the
History of Accounting, ed. A.C. Littleton and B. S. Yamey, London, 1956,
14-74

Saller, R. P. ‘Patria potestas and the stereotype of the Roman family’,
Continuity and Change 1 (1986) 7-22

Salvioli, G. I/ capitalismo antico. Storia dell economia romana. Bari, 1929. 2nd
edn by A. Giardina, Bari, 1982

Schneider, H. C. Altstrassenforschung. Darmstadt, 1982

Scobie, A. ‘Slums, sanitation and mortality in the Roman world’, Kéio 68

870

224,
225.
226.
227.
228.
229.
230.
231.
232.
233,

234.

235.
236.

237.
238.
239.
240.

241.

242.
243.
244.
245.
246.
247.
248.

249.

G. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

(1986) 399-443

Sereni, E. Paesaggio agrario italiano. Bari, 1961

Sirago, V. A. ‘La personalita di C. Vestorio’, Puteoli 3 (1979) 3-16
Skydsgaard, J. E. ‘The disintegration of the Roman labour market and
the theory of clientela’, Studia Romana in honorem P. Krarup septuagenarii,
ed. K. Ascami ef a/., Odense, 1976, 44-8

Skydsgaard, J. E. ‘Non-slave labour in rural Italy during the late
Republic’, Non-Slave Labour, 65-72

Solin, H. Die griechischen Personennamen in Rom: ein Namenbuch ( Auctarium
ad CIL). 3 vols. Berlin and New York, 1982

Spurr, S. ‘The cultivation of millet in Roman Italy’, PBSR 51 (1983) 1-15
Spurr, 5. Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy. London, 1986

Stambaugh, J. E. The Ancient Roman City. Baltimore, 1988

Statoe moneta fra la tarda repubblicae il primo impero. Incontro di studio, Roma,
19 aprile 1982. AIIN 29 (1982)

Steffensen, F. ‘Fiscus in der spaten rémischen Republik’, Ce>M 28 (1967)
254-85

Steinby, M. ‘L’edilizia come industria pubblica e privata’, RID Suppl.
X (1983) 219-21

Tanzer, H. H. The Common People of Pompeii. Baltimore, 1939

Taylor, L. R. “The four urban tribes and the four regions of Rome’,
RPAA 27 (1952-4) 225-38

Tchernia, A. ‘Les fouilles sousmarines de Planier (Bouches-du-Rhone’),
CRAI 1969, 292-309

Tchernia, A. Le vin de Italie romaine. Essai d'histoire écononrique d’aprés les
amphores (BEF AR 261). Rome, 1986

Tecnologia, economia e socteta nel mondo romano (Atti del convegno, Como 27-9
sett. 1979). Como, 1980 (also in Abbreviations)

Thebért, Y. ‘Economie, société et politique aux deux derniers siécles de
la République romaine’, Annales (ESC) 48 (1980) 871-911

Thiel, J. H. Endoxus of Cyzicus. A Chapter in the History of the Sea-Route to
India and the Route round the Cape in Ancient Times (Historische Studies van
de R. U. te Utrecht 23). Groningen, 1966

Tibiletti, G. ‘Lo sviluppo del latifondo’, Atti del X. congresso internat. per
le scienze storiche 11, Rome, 1955, 237-92

Toller, O. J. De spectaculis cenis distributionibus in municiptis Romanis
Orientis imperatorum aetate exhibitis. Altenburg, 1889

Torelli, M. ‘Innovazioni nelle tecniche edilizie romane tra il I. sec. a.C. €
il I. sec. d.C.’, Tecnologia, 139-62

Tozzi, G. Economisti greci e romani. Milan, 1961

Tozzi, P. Sagei di topografia storica. Florence, 1974

Treggiari, S. Rowan Freedmen during the Late Republic. Oxford, 1969
Treggiari, S. ‘Urban labour in Rome: mercennarii et tabernarii’, Non-
Slave Labour, 48-64

Vélissaropoulos, J. Les naucléres grecs. Recherches sur les institutions
maritimes en Gréce et dans l’Orient hellénisé. Geneva and Paris, 1980

250.
251.
252.
253.
254.

255.
256.

257.
258.
259.
260.
261.
262.
263.
264.

265.

266.

RELIGION AND IDEAS 871

Veyne, P. Le pain et le cirque. Sociologie historique d'un pluralisme politique.
Paris, 1976, in part transl. by B. Pearce as Bread and Circuses, London,
1990

Veyne, P. ‘Mythe et réalité de l’autarcie 4 Rome’, REA 81 (1979) 261-80
Virlouvet, C. Famines et émeutes des origines de la République a la mort de
Neéron (Coll. éc. fr. de Rome 87). Rome, 1985

Wallace-Hadrill, A., ed., Patronage in Ancient Society. London and New
York, 1989

Waltzing, J.-P. Etudes bistoriques sur les corporations professionnelles che les
Romains. 4 vols. Louvain, 1895-1900

Ward-Perkins, J. B. Roman Architecture. New York, 1977

Weber, C. W. Panem et circenses. Massenunterhaltung als Politik im antiken
Rom. Disseldorf, 1983

White, K. D. ‘Latifundia’, BICS 14 (1967) 62-79

White, K. D. A Bibliography of Roman Agriculture. Reading, 1970
White, K. D. Roman Farming. London, 1970

Whittaker, C. R. ‘Il povero’, L’somo romano, ed. A. Giardina, Rome,
1989, 299-333

Yavetz, Z. ‘The living conditions of the plebs in Republican Rome’,
Latomus 17 (1958) 500-17 (= Seager, Crisis, 162~79)

Yavetz, Z. Plebs and Princeps. Oxford, 1969. 2nd edn, 1988

Yavetz, Z. ‘Fluctuations monétaires et condition de la plébe 4 la fin de la
République’, Recherches sur les structures sociales dans l'antiquité classique,
Caen, 25-6 avril 1969, introd. de C. Nicolet, Paris, 1970, 133-57

Yeo, C. A. ‘Land and sea transportation in imperial Italy’, TAPAA 77
(1946) 221-44

Zehnacker, H. Moneta. Recherches sur l’organisation et l'art des émissions
monétaires de la République romaine (287-31 av. J.-C.) (BEFAR 222). 2
vols. Rome, 1973

Zimmer, G. Rémische Berufsdarstellungen. Berlin, 1982

H. RELIGION AND IDEAS

Alféldi, A. ‘Zum Gottesgnadentum des Sulla’, Chiron 6 (1976) 143-58
Ambaglio, D. ‘La dedica delle opere letterarie antiche fino all’eta dei
Flavi’, Sages di letteratura e storiografia antiche, ed. D. Ambaglio ef a/. (Bibl.
di Athenaeum 2). Como, 1983

Anderson, W.S. Pompey, his Friends, and the Literature of the First Century
B.C. (Univ. of Calif. Pubs. in Class. Philol. 19.1). Berkeley, 1963
Badian, E. ‘The early historians’, Latin Historians, ed. T. A. Dorey,
London, 1966, 1-38

Barnes, J. ‘Antiochus of Ascalon’, Philosophia Togata, 51-96

Barwick, K. Das rednerische Bildungsideal Ciceros (ASAW 54.3). Berlin,
1963

Basanoff, V. Evocatio: étude d'un rituel militaire romain. Paris, 1947
Beard, M. ‘Cicero and divination: the formation of a Latin discourse’,

872

10.

IOA.

20.

21.

22,

23.

24.
25.

26.

27.
28.

29.

30.

H. RELIGION AND IDEAS

JRS 76 (1986) 33-46

Beard, M. ‘A complex of times: no more sheep on Romulus’ birthday’,
PCPAS 33 (1987) 1-15

Beard, M. ‘Priesthood in the Roman Republic’, Pagan Priests, 19-48
Beard, M. ‘Writing and religion: Ancient Literacy and the function of the
written word in Roman religion’, in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. S.
Humphrey, Ann Arbor, 1991, 35-58

Beck, R. ‘Mithraism since Franz Cumont’, ANRKW 11.17.4 (1984)
2002-115

Bémont, C. ‘Les enterrés vivants du Forum Boarium. Essai
d’interprétation’, MEFRA 72 (1960) 133-46

Bomer, F. Untersuchungen siber die Religion der Sklaven in Griechenland und
Rom.1 Die wichtigsten Kulte und Religionen in Rom und im lateinischen Westen.
Mainz, 1957. 2nd edn revd. by P. Herz (Forsch. zur antiken Sklaverei
14.1), Wiesbaden, 1981

Bomer, F. ‘Kybele in Rom’, MDAI(R) 71 (1964) 130-51

Boissier, G. Cicéron et ses amis. Etude sur la société romaine du temps de César.
11th edn, Paris, 1899

Bonner, S. F. Education in Ancient Rome from the Elder Cato to the Younger
Pliny. London, 1977

Boyancé, P. ‘Les méthodes de l’histoire littéraire: Cicéron et son oeuvre
philosophique’, REL 14 (1936) 288-309 (= Etudes sur Phumanisme
cicéronien, Brussels, 1970, 199-221)

Briquel, D. ‘Rituel d’ensévelissement au Forum Boarium’, REL 59
(1981) 30-7

Bruneau, P. Recherches sur les cultes de Délos a époque hellénistique et al’ époque
impériale (BEF AR 217). Paris, 1970

Brunt, P. ‘Philosophy and religion in the later Republic’, Philosophia
Togata, 174-98

Bulard, M. La religion domestique dans Ja colonie italienne de Délos d aprés les
peintures murales et les autels historiés (BEF_AR 131). Paris, 1926
Burkert, W. ‘Cicero als Platoniker und Skeptiker’, Gymnasium 72 (1965)
175-200

Burkert, W. ‘Zur geistesgeschichtlichen Einordnung einiger Pseudo-
pythagorica’, Entretiens Hardt 18 (1971) 23-55

della Casa, A. Nigidio Figulo (Nuovi saggi 42). Rome, 1962

Cichorius, C. ‘Staatliche Menschenopfer’, Romische Studien, Leipzig,
1922, 7-20

Clausen, W. V. ‘The new direction in poetry’, CHCL 11 (1982) 178-206
Coleman, R. ‘The dream of Scipio’, PCPhSA 10 (1964) 1-14

Cramer, F. H. ‘Expulsion of astrologers from ancient Rome’, Ce>M 12
(1951) 9-50

Crawford, M. H. ‘Greek intellectuals and the Roman aristocracy’,
Imperialism in the Ancient World, ed. P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R.
Whittaker, Cambridge, 1978, 193-207

Degrassi, A. ‘Le dediche di popoli e re asiatici al popolo romano e a

31.
32.

33.

34.

35-

37-

38.
39-

40.

41.
42.

43.
44.
45-
46.
47.
48.
49.

50.

§1.

§2.

53.

RELIGION AND IDEAS 873

Giove Capitolino’, BCAR 74 (1951-2) 19-47 (=A 26, I, 415-44)
Dillon, J. The Middle Platonists. London, 1977

Dorner, F. K. and Gruben, G. ‘Die Exedra der Ciceronen’, MD AI( A)
68 (1953) 63-76

Donini, P. Le scuole lanima limpero: la filosofia antica da Antioco a Plotino.
Turin, 1982

Donini, P. ‘The history of the concept of electicism’, The Question of
‘Eclecticism’, Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, ed. J. M. Dillon and A. A.
Long, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1988, 15-33

Douglas, A. E. ‘The intellectual background of Cicero’s Rhetorica: a
study in method’, ANRW 1.3 (1973) 95-138

Dunand, F. ‘Cultes égyptiens hors d’Egypte. Essai d’analyse des
conditions de leur diffusion’, Religions, pouvoirs, rapports sociaux (Ann. litt.
Univ. Besancon 237), Paris, 1980, 71-148

Eckstein, A. M. ‘Human sacrifice and fear of military disaster in
Republican Rome’, AjJAH 7 (1982) 69-95

Fayer, C. I/culto della dea Roma (Coll. di saggi e ricerche 9). Pescara, 1976
Forbes, C. A. ‘The education and training of slaves in antiquity’,
TAPHhA 86 (1955) 321-60

Fraschetti, A. ‘Le sepolture rituali del Foro Boario’, Le délit religienx,
sI-115

Fraschetti, A. ‘La sepoltura delle Vestali e la citta, Du Chatiment, 97-129
Frier, B. W. ‘Augural symbolism in Sulla’s invasion of 83’, ANSMusN
13 (1967) 111-18

Furley, D. J. ‘Lucretius the Epicurean’, Entretiens Hardt 24 (1978) 1-37
Gagé, J. Apollon romain (BEF AR 182). Paris, 1955

Gallini, C. ‘Politica religiosa di Clodio’, SAISK 33 (1962) 257-72
Gallini, C. Protesta e integrazione nella Roma antica (Bibl. di cultura
moderna 698). Bari, 1970

Gesche, H. Die Vergottung Caesars (Frankfurter althist. Studien 1).
Frankfurt, 1968

Glucker, J. Antiochus and the Late Academy. Gottingen, 1978

Glucker, J. ‘Cicero’s philosophical affiliations’, The Question of
‘Eclecticism’. Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, ed. J. M. Dillon and A. A.
Long, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1988, 34-69

Gordon, R. L. ‘From Republic to Principate: priesthood, religion and
ideology’, Pagan Priests, 179-98

Grafton, A. T. and Swerdlow, N. M. ‘Technical chronology and
astrological. history in Varro, Censorinus and others’, CQ 35 (1985)
454-65

Gratwick, A. S. ‘The satires of Ennius and Lucilius’, CHCL 11 (1982)
156-71

Griffin, M. ‘Philosophy, politics and politicians at Rome’, Philosophia
Togata, 1-37

Grimal, P. ‘Le poéme de Lucréce en son temps’, Entretiens Hardt 24
(1978) 233-70

874

55.
57-
58.
59-
60.
61.

62.
63.

64.
65.
66.
68.
69.

70.
JI.

72.
73:

74.
7S.

76.

77:

78.
79:

80.

81.

82.

H. RELIGION AND IDEAS

Grube, G. M. A. The Greek and Roman Critics. London, 1965

Hanson, J. A. Roman Theater Temples. Princeton, 1959

Hadot, I. Arts liberaux et philosophie dans la pensée antique. Paris, 1984
Harris, W. V. ‘Literacy and epigraphy 1’, ZPE 52 (1983) 87-111
Heldmann, K. Antike Theorien siber Entwicklung und Verfall der Redekunst
(Zetemata 77). Munich, 1982

Horsfall, N. ‘Varro and Caesar: three chronological problems’, BICS 19
(1972) 120-8

Horsfall, N. ‘Doctus sermones utriusque linguae?’, EMC 22 (1979)
85-95

Horsfall, N. ‘Prose and mime’, CHCL 11 (1982) 286-94

Jocelyn, H. D. ‘The Roman nobility and the religion of the Roman state’,
JRA 4 (1966) 89-104

Jocelyn, H. D. ‘The ruling class of the Roman Republic and Greek
philosophers’, BRL 59 (1976/7) 323-66

Jocelyn, H. D. ‘Varro’s Antiquitates rerum diuinarum and religious affairs
in the late Roman Republic’, BRL 65 (1982/3) 148-205

Jones, C. P. ‘The Plancii of Perge and Diana Planciana’, HSPh 80 (1976)
Jones, D. M. ‘Cicero as a translator’, BICS 6 (1959) 22-34

Keaveney, A. ‘Sulla and the gods’, Studies in Latin Literature and Roman
History 11, ed. C. Deroux (Coll. Latomus 180), Brussels, 1983, 44-79
K6ves-Zulauf, T. ‘Plinius d. A. und die rémische Religion’, ANRW
1.16.1 (1978) 187-288

Kroll, W. Die Kultur der ciceronischen Zeit. Leipzig, 1933

Kroll, W. ‘Tullius’ (29): ‘Die rhetorischen Schriften’, RE 7A (1939)
1091-103

Kumaniecki, K. ‘Cicerone e Varrone. Storia di una conoscenza’,
Athenaeum 40 (1962) 221-43

Le Bonniec, H. Le culte de Cérés a Rome des origines a la fin de la République
(Et. et commentaires 27). Paris, 1938

Le Gall, J. ‘Evocatio’, Mé/. Heargon 1 519-24

Le Glay, M. ‘Magie et sorcellerie 4 Rome au dernier siécle de la
République’, Mé/. Heurgon 1 525-50

Leone, M. ‘Il problema del flaminato de Cesare’, Dirtas Xadpw,
Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni, ed. M. J. Fontana, M.
T. Piraino and F. P. Rizzo, 1, Rome, 1976, 193-212

Liebeschuetz, J. H. W. G. Continuity and Change in Roman Religion.
Oxford, 1979

Linderski, J. ‘Cicero and Roman divination’ PP 36 (1982) 12-38
MacBain, B. Prodigy and Expiation: a Study in Religion and Politics in
Republican Rome (Coll. Latomus 177). Brussels, 1982

Malaise, M. Les conditions de pénétration et de diffusion des cultes égyptiens en
Italie (Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l’empire romain
22). Leiden, 1972

Marshall, A. J. “Library resources and creative writing at Rome’, Phoenix
30 (1976) 252-64

Mellor, R. QEA PQMH. The Worship of the Goddess Roma in the Greek

83.
84.

85.

86.

87.
88.
89.
go.

gl.

92.
93-
94:
95:
97:
98.
99.

100,

101,

102.
103.

104.
105.

106.

RELIGION AND IDEAS 875

World (Hypomnemata 42). Gottingen, 1975

Mitchell, T. N. ‘The /eges Clodiae and obnuntiatio’, CQ 36 (1986) 172~-6
Momigliano, A. ‘Epicureans in revolt’, JRS 31 (1941) 151-7 (= Secondo
contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Rome, 1960, 379-88)

Momigliano, A. Alien Wisdom. The Limits of Hellenization. Cambridge,
1975

Momigliano, A. ‘The origins of universal history’, Univ. of London
Creighton Lecture, ASNP 12 (1982) 533-60 (= Settimo contributo alla
Storia degli studi classici, Rome, 1984, 77-103)

Momigliano, A. ‘The theological efforts of the Roman upper classes in
the first century B.c.’, CPA 79 (1984) 199-211 (= Oftavo contributo alla
storia degli studi classici, Rome, 1987, 261-77)

Moretti, L. ‘Chio e la lupa Capitolina’, RFIC 108 (1980) 33-54
Mysteries of Diana. The antiquities from Nemi in Nottingham museums. Castle
Museum, Nottingham, 1983

Nock, A. D. ‘Religious developments from the close of the Republic to
the reign of Nero’, CAH x, 1st edn, 1934, 465-511

Norden, E. Aus altrémischen Priesterbiichern. Die Spruchformel der Augurn
auf der Burg (Skr. utgivna av Kongl. Humanistiska Vetenskabssamfundet i Lund
29). Lund and Leipzig, 1939

North, J. A. ‘Praesens divus’, rev. of Weinstock, Divus Iulius, ]RS 65
(1975) 171-7

North, J. A. ‘Conservatism and change in Roman religion’, PBSR 44
(1976) 1-12

North, J. A. ‘Religious toleration in Republican Rome’, PCPAS 25
(1979) 85-103

North, J. A. ‘Novelty and choice in Roman religion’, J/RS 70 (1980)
186-91

North, J. A. ‘Diviners and divination at Rome’, Pagan Priests, 51-71
Pagan Priests. See Abbreviations

Paillier, J.-M. ‘“‘Raptos a diis homines dici . . .”” (Tite-Live 39.13): les
Bacchanales et la possession par les nymphes’, Mé/. Heurgon 11, 731-42
Paillier, J.-M. ‘La spirale de l’interprétation: les Bacchanales’, Axnales
(ESC) 37 (1982) 929-52

Paillier, J.-M. ‘Les pots cassés des Bacchanales’, MEFRA 95 (1983)
7-34

Pédech, P. ‘Les idées religieuses de Polybe. Etude sur la religion gréco-
romaine au second siécle av. J.-C.’, RHR 167-8 (1965) 35~68
Philosophia Togata. See Abbreviations

Price, S. R. F. Rituals and Power: the Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor.
Cambridge, 1984

Rawson, E. ‘Cicero the historian and Cicero the antiquarian’, JRS 62
(1972) 33-45 (=A 94A, 58-79)

Rawson, E. ‘Scipio, Laelius, Furius and the ancestral religion’, JRS 63
(1973) 161-74 (=A 94A, 80~101)

Rawson, E. ‘Religion and politics in the late second century at Rome’,
Phoenix 28 (1974) 193-212 (=A 94A, 149-68)

876

107.
108.
109.
110.

Til.

112,

113.
114.
115,

116.
117.

118.
119.

121.

122.

123.

124.

125.

126,

127.

128,

129.
130,

132,

133.

H. RELIGION AND IDEAS

Rawson, E. ‘The introduction of logical organisation in Roman prose
literature’, PBSR 46 (1978) 12-34 (=A 94A, 324-51)

Rawson, E. ‘L. Cornelius Sisenna and the early first century B.c.’, CO 29
(1979) 327-46 (=A 944A, 363-88)

Rawson, E. Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic. London, 1985
Rawson, E, rev. of Hadot, Arts libéraux, ]RS 77 (1987) 214-15
Rohde, G. Die Kultsatgungen der romischen Pontifices (Religionsgeschichtliche
Versuche und Vorarbeiten 25). Berlin, 1936

Scheid, J. ‘Le délit religieux dans la Rome tard-républicaine’, Le délit
religiewx, 117-71

Scheid, J. Religion et piété a Rome. Paris, 1985

Schilling, R. La religion romaine de Vénus (BEF AR 178). Paris, 1954
Schilling, R. ‘La déification 4 Rome. Tradition latine et interférences
grecques’, REL 58 (1980) 137-52

Schofield, M. ‘Cicero for and against divination’, JRS 76 (1986) 47-65
Scullard, H. H. Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. London,
1981

Simon, E. ‘Apollo in Rom’, JDAI 93 (1978) 202-27

Stahl, W. H. Rowman Science: Origins, Development, and Influence to the Later
Middle Ages. Madison, WI, 1962

Stiss, W. Cicero: eine Einfiihrung in seine philosophischen Schriften. Mainz,
1966

Taeger, F. Charisma. Studien zur Geschichte des antiken Herrscherkultes. 2
vols. Stuttgart, 1957 and 1960

Tarrant, H. Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy.
Cambridge, 1985

Taylor, D. J. Declinatio: a Study of the Linguistic Theory of Marcus Terentius
Varro. Amsterdam, 1975

Taylor, L. R. The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (Amer. Philological Ass.
Philological Monographs 1). Middletown, CT, 1931

Thesleff, H. An Introduction to the Pythagorean Writings of the Hellenistic
Period. Abo, 1961

Thesleff, H., rev. of della Casa, Nigidio Figulo, Gnomon 37 (1965) 44-8
Thesleff, H. ‘On the problems of the Doric Pseudo-Pythagorica. An
alternative theory of date and purpose’, Entretiens Hardt 18 (1971)
§ 7-102

Turcan, R. ‘Religion et politique dans l’affaire des Bacchanales’, rev. of
Gallini, Protesta, RHR 181 (1972) 3-28

Vermaseren, M. Cybele and Attis: the Myth and the Cult. London, 1977
Versnel, H. S. Triumphus. An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and
Meaning of the Roman Triumph. Leiden, 1970

Veyne, P. ‘“‘Titulus praelatus’’: offrande, sollénisation et publicité dans
les ex-voto gréco-romains’, RA (1983) 281-300

Vogt, J. ‘Zum Herrscherkult bei Julius Caesar’, Studies presented to D. M.
Robinson, ed. G. E. Mylonas and D. Raymond, 11, St Louis, 1953, 1138-
46

Weinrib, E. J. ‘Obnuntiatio: two problems’, ZSS 87 (1970) 395-425

134.
135.

136,
137.

138.

RELIGION AND IDEAS 877

Weinstock, S. Divus Julius. Oxford, 1971

Williams, G. W. Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire.
Berkeley, 1978

Winterbottom, M. ‘Literary criticism’, CHCL 11 (1982) 33-50
Wissowa, G. Religion und Kultus der Romer. 2nd edn (Handb. der
Altertumswissensch. v.4). Munich, 1912

Zeller, E. Die Philosophie der Griechen in ibrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. 5th
edn, Leipzig, 1923

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 9"

See other formats